Lunar Tears
by Nena Camadera
Summary: The Past could only watch helplessly as the Present is invaded by The Abomination and The Dragon. Their inaction will lead to the burden of the Future, and the indomitable will of Humanity to survive...
1. Anomalies

_There are some things that I will always remember about that day. Things I hate. Things I wish I never saw._

 _I remember the giant._

 _I remember the dragon._

 _And I remember their deaths._

 _I remember Urd's fear. Keiichi's confusion. Belldandy's Urgency. And the one who was sent to retrieve us._

 _The demons. The revelation. The choice presented to my sister._

 _I remember Hild, and the last time I ever saw Belldandy and Keiichi._

 _And I remember how little I could do to stop any of it…how I was little more than a bystander; a child, incapable of doing anything to stop it._

 _Yggdrasil…I wish I could forget that day…_

 _~ From the Journal of Skuld Tyrdottor, Guardian of Humanity_

* * *

"We interrupt your daily program with an emergency broadcast."

Skuld looked up, her brows furrowed together in confusion as she stared at the shaken newscaster on screen. "What gives?" She grumbled, placing her screwdriver down from where she'd been tinkering with one of her smaller gadgets. "What happened to _Sentai Warriors_? I was watching that!"

The woman on screen gave her no answer, instead taking a shuddering breath, her eyes large and frightened. "As of 3:05 local, reports have come in of a strange catastrophe over Shinjuku, Tokyo." Behind her a green screen came to life, revealing a video hastily captured by a cellphone.

Skuld's jaw parted in shock, and for a brief moment she watched the grainy footage in silence; a red dragon, small and dark against the blue sky, twisting and writhing about as it took in its surroundings, its characteristics like that of a confused and frightened animal.

"Urd?" The name came out almost a whimper, yet her sister strangely absent, the house oddly silent. "Belldandy?" Skuld called louder, and the phone owner turned to a second entity that appeared, this of a horrid grey giant, its body feminine in shape only, it's face drawn in a nightmarish snarl. "Guys?!" This time it came out as a shout, and her eyes never leaving the screen the girl scrambled to her feet, anxious for a response and yet too enraptured by the images before her to look away.

"The JASDF have scrambled jets to face these unknown threats, and are currently in route towards Shinjuku. Officers in the area are being instructed to aid in evacuation of the city, and request that all citizens follow their instructions as the JASDF will be going in with live ammunition." The camera feed behind the newswoman immediately cut off, ending the view of the foreign dragon and the grey giant. "We will now go live with reporter Setsuna Hideroki at…."

The woman trailed off, and a new scene appeared on screen, this of a young man located on what appeared to be a hill top. People clustered around him in a heavy assembly, many with phones out and pointing to the grey giant in the background. "This is Setsuna Hideroki at…" the man had to shout to be heard over the chatter of the crowd. Above his head came a roar of engines, and the camera tilted up, catching sight of a pair of F-15 J-models flying overhead. Their bellies exposed, Skuld could easily make out the two US-made AIM-9 missiles intermingled with a larger pair of Japanese AAM-5 missiles. The girl's throat went dry as she recognized the weapons. The reporter wasn't kidding. These guys were going in _hot_.

She missed anything else the reporters had to say, her attention glued to the screen as the camera crew followed the white stream left be the F-15's as they traveled towards the giant. "No…" She heard herself murmur, and her eyes began to burn with strain. "No, please, no…" The youth didn't dare blink for fear of missing what she knew was about to happen. She needed to see this. She _had_ to see this. "Don't do it…please…"

The youth could almost _feel_ it. She imagined herself, riding co-pilot in the lead F-15. " _Oni zero-one, this is Dragon two-two, currently fifteen nautical from Gray Bogie, do you copy, over."_

" _Dragon two-two, Oni zero-one, we read you loud and clear."_ Came the radio's response, _"You are in the clear to engage at your discretion, all known civilians have been evac'd. Recommend using two by AIM-9's followed by a second go with the AAM-5's based off weapons effect."_

" _Roger, Wilco."_

"No…please, don't do it." Her voice came out a whimper, yet the pilot didn't hear her, too busy prepping for his attack.

" _Moving in range of target, Oni zero-one."_

" _Copy, you are cleared to engage."_

" _Rodger that. One by Fox-one away,"_ the fighter released its weapon before swerving sharply to the right. _"Standby for second engagement."_ Skuld watched in horrified fascination as the missile struck the giant in the chest, sending chunks of gray stone and dust flying. It recoiled with the resulting explosion, its gaping mouth yawning ever-wider in a thunderous roar that seemed both close and far all at once. Within the cockpit, screens flashed and the HUD flared, alarms went off and the aircraft trembled. _"What the hell? What is this? Some kind of EMP?!"_

Skuld shook her head, rousing herself and bringing her consciousness back within her body. She rubbed her head, grimacing at the headache beating within her brow as the newscast continued to follow the pair of F-15s. One of them appeared to be stalling.

Skuld didn't stay to see what might happen next. "Urd!" She cried, abandoning the living room in search of her sister. "Urd, the news, it's—" she found her sister on the phone, the older woman's face tight and angry.

"Why?" The woman hissed, and Skuld took a step back, intimidated by the low, focused rage held within her sister's voice. "No Peorth, not until you give me a better explanation. What are you talking about? Everything here is…" The woman trailed off, listening to the goddess on the other line, and as Skuld watched on the hand holding the phone clenched tighter, and a long, thick crack slowly crawled up the length of the receiver. "…Are you certain?"

"Urd, the TV…"

Urd looked up, and Skuld started at the intense look on her sibling's face. Something was wrong. _Very_ wrong. "Urd?"

"Not now Skuld, I need to talk to Peorth. Go get Belldandy. Something's happening back home and Peorth says we might get called back for damage control."

An uneasy lump settled in Skuld's stomach, and the girl bit her lip. "But the TV…there's a dragon and—"

"Listen Skuld, whatever it is we can talk about it later." Urd's tone left no room for arguments. "Now hurry up and get Bell. This is important."

The youth paused, opening her mouth to argue before thinking better on it as her sister returned her attention to the phone. A shiver ran up the girl's spine, and gritting her teeth the young goddess turned and left to fetch her other sibling.

Urd was afraid. Of what, Skuld was uncertain, and that scared _her_. Urd was brave. Braver than even Belldandy, though Skuld hated to admit it. The elder goddess didn't spook easily. For something to unnerve her…and the dragon, the giant-

Sliding open the door to go outside, Skuld craned her head back to look back once more at her eldest sister. Though she spoke softly and kept her back to Skuld, the girl could still hear snippets of the conversation. " _Everyone?_ Even the demons?" Urd hissed, "Who told you that?"

Whatever came next went unheard as Skuld slipped on her shoes and stepped outside. The uneasiness in her stomach was growing, and biting her lip the youth set off in search of her second sister. "Belldandy!" She called, heading into the forest towards one of her sister's favored communal spots. Around her the trees sighed, and a dank wind that smelled like the ocean; damp and salty, whipped her hair across her face.

The girl shuddered. Something in the gale spoke of a strange and horrid foreboding, and rubbing her arms with a frown Skuld continued her search, heading back towards the shrine. "Belldandy?" She called once more. "Big Sis! Where are you? Somethings happening and Urd's freaking out, and there was a dragon on TV! A _dragon!_ They aren't even _part_ of this dimension!"

She was ranting now, she knew, yet Skuld found herself caring little. "What's going on? I mean is this like what happened with Niflheim? Where those stupid little imps got loose and started granting everyone's wishes?"

Her sister wasn't at the shrine either. The roof of the house was void of goddesses as well, and with a deepening frown, Skuld increased her search, finding her steps gradually growing more and more rushed when still no one appeared.

Had she left the shrine? It was possible that her sister had left to visit Keiichi at college, but then shook her head. It was Sunday. Keiichi didn't have class today, but had left the house earlier that morning to get some extra hours in at The Whirlwind. He was only supposed to be working a half-day, which was why Belldandy hadn't originally accompanied him to the office.

"But wouldn't she have said something if she left?" Skuld ran a hand through her hair in exasperation. "Or does she know about the dragon? Can she sense it, and that giant? Did she leave to go and grab that idiot?"

The girl didn't know, and the more she dwelt on it the more unanswered questions rose in her mind. Gritting her teeth with a mixture of frustration and anxiety, Skuld looked around. "Banpei! Sigel!" She cried, and immediately the two androids appeared, rushing from behind the house in a mad dash that would have been entertaining to watch at any other time. "Have you seen Belldandy?"

Banpei nodded and pointed. "Lady Belldandy was standing on the _tori_ in front of the stairs last we saw," Sigel verified, "She looked troubled. Is something wrong?"

Skuld frowned. "I…maybe." She muttered. "It's…hard to say right now. Some weird things are happening and…" the young goddess trailed off, noticing the alarmed look that crossed the child-like android's face. Swallowing her own anxieties, the youth smiled, burying her own insecurities behind a mask of confidence. "It's nothing, I'm sure of it. At worst, it's probably another demon's scheme. If so a Valkyrie, probably Lind, will come down and intervene. Everything will be fine."

Her words seemed to bolster her 'bots confidence. Banpei pumped a fist encouragingly, and Sigel seemed to relax. Skuld wished she held as much confidence in her own words. "Oh, if that's all it is, then just say the word when you want us to help." Behind her Banpei nodded. "We're both eager to try out those 'anti-demon bullets' you made for us, but for whatever reason the 'usual suspects' have been conveniently absent as of late."

Skuld nodded. "Don't worry, I'll let you know. Thanks for the intel, guys." At the dismissal the two wandered off. With Sigel distracted, Banpei hesitantly attempted to wrap an arm around her shoulders, and paid for it with what amounted to a painful punch from its feminine counterpart. Abruptly, Sigel snapped something at the robot, and was then off in a burst of speed, leaving Banpei to chase after her, once more resuming their daily game of cat and mouse.

Skuld watched it idly for a moment, her gaze trailing after her two creations without really seeing them. _The 'usual suspects'…_ she mused. _Sigel's right. We haven't seen any demons other than Velsper in a while. I wonder…could it?_ The girl looked over to the front of the shrine, where even know she could see the _tori_ , empty of any sort of divine resident. Were the demons responsible for the giant and the dragon?

Surely Mara or even the Daimakaicho would have appeared already if that were the case. Unless it was some new demon in town, making a name for itself and going overboard by summoning such creatures in a land that had none. _But that'd be reckless, even for a demon._ She thought. _It'd do nothing but bring Valkyries down upon itself._

No, no…Skuld pursed her lips. "It's too soon to tell." She murmured, heading to the _tori_ and looking down the slope of the shrine. Nekomi rested at the mountain's base, the buildings tall and gray, glimmering with sunlight reflected from windows. "We're a good many hours away from Tokyo. If the demons wanted to bother us here specifically, they chose the wrong city to summon giants in."

Movement caught her attention, and silently Skuld watched as a lone motorcycle climbed up the mountain road, approaching at a speed that would have been dangerous for anyone without the discipline and control of an experienced driver. Relief fell upon her shoulders, and as the bike drew closer Skuld caught sight of a passenger in the attached side car. "Thank goodness." She murmured. "Looks like Belldandy went to get Keiichi after all."

A part of her considered returning to the shrine to inform Urd, but then thought better of it. Urd could wait, and probably didn't want to be interrupted just for Skuld to tell her that Belldandy and Keiichi were on their way. Easier to simply guide the others to her annoying older sister instead, and then hear whatever big announcement Urd had to say.

Her thoughts drifted back to the dragon, and her mind's eye replayed its final moments: its attack against the giant, it's slow, growing victory crumbled by the arrival of JASDF F-15s arriving to take the two foreign entities down with AIM-9 missiles…The girl closed her eyes, a troubled frown on her face.

She jumped when a hand came to rest on her shoulder.

Starting, Skuld opened her eyes and looked up, wordlessly finding Urd at her side. The woman's expression mirrored her own anxiety, and instead of questioning her Skuld held her silence. Quietly, the elder Norn embraced her, and the girl leaned into the hug, taking strength in Urd's arms.

In a brooding silence, they watched the couple below come close. Their thoughts were their own, their discomforts similar, and in the foreboding disquiet they waited, eager and anxious to share what they had learned.

* * *

"Inside, quickly."

There was a great deal of urgency in Belldandy's tone, and though she rushed to obey her favored sister, it took Skuld a moment to realize that the middle Norn's words were directed more towards Keiichi than herself.

Keiichi passed them all, his face dark and grim. Skuld wondered at what knowledge could have produced such an expression.

She had little time to ponder. "Urd, Skuld, I need your aid in constructing a barrier around the shrine. Time is of the essence; the fallout will be in reach of us within the next three hours."

 _That_ got her attention. "Fallout?" Skuld looked at Belldandy sharply. "What fallout? You don't mean _nuclear_ fallout, do you?"

Belldandy shook her head. "Nothing so simple." She confessed, looking to the heavens anxiously. "I fear the military of this country erred greatly in their rash decision to confront the Outsiders."

"Outsiders?" Urd asked. "You mean-"

Belldandy shook her head. "I am afraid I must ask that such things wait," she interrupted, "I do not know how large an area will be affected by the fallout, and I will not endanger Keiichi to that…" the Norn bit her lip but did not finish her sentence, leaving Skuld and Urd grasping at straws.

Finally Urd nodded. "Alright, let's get this taken care of." She said. "We'll triangulate a barrier that should keep anything out that's not at a molecular level." She glanced at Belldandy. "That will be enough, right? Any more and we risk suffocating Keiichi and anything else living inside."

Belldandy thought for a moment before nodding. "Yes…yes, that should be good enough."

"I can help too!" Skuld announced. "I've got an air purifier that ought to take care of anything that _does_ pass through the barrier. It should neutralize anything harmful that might escape our notice."

Belldandy rewarded her with a smile, though it was weary. "Yes, Skuld that's wonderful. Would you please set it up once the barrier is erected? I don't want to take any chances right now."

Skuld nodded enthusiastically as Urd took over once more. "Okay girls, let's hurry. Belldandy, you get in front of the shrine. Skuld, head over to the westernmost portion of the house and back up about fifty meters. I'll do the same on the east part of the shrine. Give a shout when you're in position. Belldandy, once you've heard from both of us, go ahead and start the spell."

Nods and murmured agreements rose from the trio, and Skuld rushed off to the west side. "Banpei! Sigel! Get in the house!" She cried, catching a blur of movement that had to have been them. She didn't bother to stop and look, too focused on accomplishing the task at hand. Approaching her position as per Urd's instruction, Skuld paused and wheeled around. "I'm ready!" She cried, and from across the courtyard she could hear Urd's affirmative reply.

A small buildup of pressure began to build around the shrine, and if she listened carefully Skuld could just make out her sister singing softly. Instinctively, the girl held out her hands, and she felt a gentle wave of magic channel into her fingers on her right hand and then out her left.

In order to get a proper triangulation of where the barrier should fall and with the least amount of energy wasted, Belldandy was using herself and Urd as place marks, creating a conduit that would guide the power to its proper locations.

Slowly, the pressure began to build around her, and through her higher senses Skuld followed the accumulation of magic as it rose up and around, then gently began to conform to a rounded triangular dome around the house and shrine. The hair on the nape of her neck stood erect at the unearthly sensation, and as the dome fell upon the earth there came an inaudible _pop_ as the pressure trapped within began to decompress.

The pop was signal enough to tell her that the spell had ended, and Skuld shook her arms and flexed her fingers, working the tingle of her sister's magic out of her body. "Bleaugh, I hate being a channel." She muttered to herself, hopping from one foot to another as though stepping on hot coals. "It's so… _nasty_ feeling."

Regardless, the spell was finished, and with it Skuld raced back to the front of the house to rejoin her sisters.

Belldandy was almost _dancing_ by the time she arrived. "Come, we must get back inside, quickly." She ordered. "The fallout won't affect us, but we could still contaminate Keiichi it falls onto our bodies."

"But what _is_ it, Big Sister?" Skuld asked as the Norns retreated inwards, feeling the hair on her arms rise as she passed through the barrier. "I don't get it—there was a giant and a dragon, and now—"

The youth was cut off as an explosion rocked the temple; a familiar explosion, one they'd all grown familiar with over the past years living on the Assiah.

The explosion that accompanied a god's descent via gate.

A cloud of dust and debris arose in the courtyard, outside of the barrier that the three sisters had erected to protect Keiichi. They felt no breeze, and the dust that would so normally sting their eyes and cloud their vision instead took a wide berth around the shrine, seemingly avoiding the small dwelling like evil spirits on holy land.

"What was that?!" Skuld jumped and turned, finding Keiichi racing out to join the trio. "Was it another one? Like the giant?" He seemed uncommonly anxious, his stress so powerful that it emanated from the mortal in waves she could _feel_.

Disturbed by the sudden onslaught, Skuld retreated from the mortal, standing closer to Urd as Belldandy rushed to calm Keiichi. Urd, by comparison, seemed unaffected by the man's disturbance, her gaze narrow and dangerous as the eldest Norn sought out the newest arrival at their shrine.

"Lind."

True to Urd's word, the named woman ventured forth in a rush, appearing from the dust like a ghost in fog, axe in hand and face pinched in an uncharacteristically sour expression. "We're leaving." She announced, her voice loud and clear over the protests of the others. "You have five minutes to gather what you feel is necessary." The Valkyrie made a beeline for Belldandy and Keiichi. "You two. We need to talk. Let's go." Not waiting to see if her instruction would be followed or not, the goddess continued forward, past the barrier and inside the residence without so much as a break in step.

Urd stared at the Valkyrie's retreating form in a mixture of bafflement, anger, and frustration. "Wait, that's it?" She demanded, "No explanation, just 'pack your shit and go'? What the hell Lind?!" An angry snarl on her face, the Norn followed after the Valkyrie, and not wanting to be alone outside, Skuld hurried after her as well.

In the far distance, the sound of explosions could just be made out in dull thrums of thunder.

The girl entered the house just as an argument was starting to descend. "What do you mean I have to make a choice?" Keiichi was staring at Lind in bewilderment. "Right now?" He continued, and Skuld paused in the doorway. Again, a wave of foreign emotions struck her, an anger so potent that it made her feel ill. "With everything that's happening, you want me to just-just _decide_ between staying here and leaving with you?"

"No," Lind replied, her voice cool with authority. "I expect you to speak with Belldandy and then decide. Be happy I'm even allowing you this opportunity." She shook her head, ignoring the heated glare Urd was directing towards her. "It is only through the friendship I hold with you that I'm even allowing you an _opportunity_ to choose. Had you been anyone else, I'd have not allowed it."

"And then what?" Keiichi hissed through gritted teeth. "If I wasn't your friend, what then? Would you have taken me by force? In chains? Knocked me out?"

"If necessary, yes." Skuld's eyes widened at the casual revelation. "We are under an emergency lockdown, and as someone who's successfully walked the Gate with a Goddess, you are now fully connected to Belldandy. The two of you _cannot_ be separated, and so where she goes so must you."

"But you just said you're giving me a choice." Keiichi countered. "So what happens if I decide to stay? Will you let Belldandy stay as well? What then?"

Lind narrowed her eyes. "I said I would allow you the _opportunity_ to decide."

"So that means-"

"That means she's not really giving you a choice." Mara walked into the kitchen, a bottle of sake in hand as she leaned against the wall. She waved at them. "Yo."

"Mara?!" Belldandy gaped at the woman in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

The demon shrugged. "Collecting demons for-" Lind rushed her without warning, and immediately Mara backpedaled, tossing the sake bottle at the warrior. "Oi, fuck off bitch!" The demon snarled.

Lind said nothing however, deflecting the tossed alcohol bottle with her axe, where the bottle was destroyed, coating the Valkyrie in sake. The demon retreated into the kitchen, and Lind followed after, with Belldandy and Urd chasing them both, shouting protests the entire way.

The goddesses froze when they entered the kitchen.

Keiichi and Skuld rushed to join them, and Skuld swallowed a gasp when she saw what _else_ had payed their home a visit.

Demons…there were demons everywhere.

Demons of all shapes and sizes, ranging from those as small as pixies to ones who had to crouch lest their heads bump the ceiling. There had to be at least a dozen of them, and as Mara retreated two others stepped forward, their gate the sharp, sure step of soldiers and their gazes hungry and eager for combat. "Stand down, Valkyrie." The smaller blonde, a male that looked like he could have been related to Mara, stepped forward. "We're here in peace, but don't think we won't attack if given a proper reason." He smiled broadly, revealing a long line of carnivorous teeth that looked unnatural in a human's mouth. "And don't think you'll win against a Goetia and a Slayer. Even with that Wendigo technique a' yours, Wolf."

Lind didn't attack.

"Hey, what gives!?" Skuld finally found her voice, and the blonde looked at her, "How'd you all get past all my wards and barriers?!"

The blonde smiled at her, and Skuld had to suppress a shiver at the sight of those teeth once more. "Mine cousin has had many a year to find a way around your magic, little goddess." He chucked a thumb back, and Mara cracked a smile at her, winking at the youth before stepping forward once more.

She kept the two soldiers safely between herself and the Valkyrie.

"So, as I was saying," She started, "The Daimakaicho tasked me with rounding up all the demons in the local area." She shrugged. "You could say she's been…busy, with everything that's been happening, otherwise she'd have done it herself."

"And what's been happening?" Keiichi demanded.

Mara blinked, staring at the man in surprise. "You mean you don't know?"

"None of us do." Belldandy replied. "All we know is that an unregistered goddess…the grey giant, suddenly entered this dimension with no warning." She shook her head. "It…she was attacked and…"

Mara looked at Urd, who crossed her arms and frowned. Her gaze then dipped to Lind. "You mean you haven't told them?"

"There isn't time for explanations."

The blonde male snorted. "Oh, that's rich." He muttered. "You hearing this, Cousin Marller?" The demon didn't take his eyes off Lind. Lind, likewise, kept her gaze squared on the two soldiers before her. "You had plenty of time to gather us all up and explain to each and every one of us what was going on and why we had to return, yet a Valkyrie sent to receive a family of divinities all living under one house can't be spared as much." He snorted in disdain.

Lind bristled. "We are not under the same restraints." It was a poor excuse, one that sounded weak even to Skuld.

"Then how about I explain things to them?" Mara's smile was unkind. "I was just getting ready to explain things to your pet pussy…cat," She bit the last word off, an unveiled insult to the cursed demon, "when you all decided to join us."

"We don't have time-"

"Nonsense," Mara's cousin cut in. "You've got plenty of time. The fallout will remain predominantly in Shinjuku until someone has the bright idea to nuke it, and that won't be for years to come." He smiled. "Really, there's plenty of time to sit and hear what mine cousin has to say." The demon beside him suddenly vanished, and Skuld gasped, feeling the hair on the nape of her neck rise in alarm as she heard the hiss of atoms rematerializing behind her. The girl looked back, and the Angel Slayer grinned down at her.

"Really, I insist. Mine cousin has some interesting things to say."

Keiichi suddenly appeared between her and the demon, and roughly he shoved her back, almost knocking her into Urd, who was quick to steady the youth. For once Skuld let the action drop. Keiichi's expression was hard and serious, and he glared at the demon balefully, the fear that should have normally dominated him absent from his features. Keeping his eyes on the demon blocking their escape the mortal spoke up. "Well, we're now your _captive_ audience. By all means, tell us what you know, Mara."

The demon woman smiled, revealing the fangs she was so infamous for. "That's more like it. Seems you've got a bit more common sense then your Norns, Boy."

"Just get on with it." Urd muttered gruffly.

"At exactly 1500 Local Time, a grey giant appeared in the Shinjuku area. This was immediately by the appearance of a red dragon and it's rider in roughly the same area." Mara began, "For reasons that are still under investigation both of these Anomalies began battling one another, using an alien caste of magic no demon currently on this plane of existence is familiar with. What we do know is that the strange giant, that ugly-ass gray statue, radiates with divine magic, which has led us to the conclusion that it is some sort of unregistered goddess." She glared hard at Lind, who returned in full force. "That is one reason we believe a recall is happening on both sides, as this unregistered goddess is, quite frankly, screwing both sides over with its sudden appearance."

Skuld's jaw dropped. "You-that thing's a _goddess_?"

Belldandy shook her head. "No…no, that can't be." She said, "I sensed no diving magic from that creature, only…only anger and…only anger and _hate_. So much hate." She sent Mara a perturbed gaze. "How can you claim that to be a goddess?"

"How can you claim creatures like Lamashtu or Chernobog as divinities?" The blonde male countered. "One's a literal cradle robber and the other is the infamous God of Evil. Both would make better demons than gods, and yet you still hold a place for them amongst your ranks. What makes this one any different?"

Belldandy bit her lip, but made no move to reply.

"At 1530," Mara continued from where she'd been interrupted. "the Japanese Air Self Defense Force scrambled jets to take out what Niflheim has labeled as Anomalies. As of…" She paused, looking at the clock that hung above the fridge. "…1600 local, the goddess has been intercepted by the JASDF, interfering with the battle between the giant and dragon. Once they finish with the goddess, and have no doubt, they'll take it out, they'll direct their attacks on the dragon."

The demon paused there, examining the faces of the goddesses and mortal before her before continuing again. "We've already predicted that the JASDF will take out the dragon like it did the giant. However the dragon isn't the main concern. It is a minor creature in comparison to the giant-a being brought into the wrong place at the wrong time, and will be taken out because of it. The _real_ concern is the goddess."

"Niflheim DEMINT has been running tests on this creature since it's initial appearance," the blonde male took over at Mara's nod. "And they've deduced that it's body isn't fully on the physical plane of this world. That alone is problematic, because of the fact that there's still going to be a fallout from the body that was destroyed." He eyed Keiichi, who was too busy glaring at the Slayer to notice the Goetia's blue gaze. "The fallout isn't fully manifested on the physical plane, and the resulting damage that's going to arise because of that fact will be horrendous."

Urd grit her teeth. "Are you telling me it's going to affect the inhabitants of this plane on an astral field as well?"

"That's exactly what we're saying." Mara replied. "How or in what way, it's too early to say. But it's a goddess, and one that seems to be fueled by hate at that, so you can make your own guesses as to say that whatever it is, it won't be pretty."

Behind them, Keiichi swore softly, risking his eyes off the demon to send a look at Mara. "Isn't there anything that can be done?" He asked.

Mara shook her head. "We know next to nothing about the Anomalies, which is one of the reason's we're being called back now. My guess is that it's the same or similar for your divinities here-they don't know how it will affect creatures of a higher plane of existence, and neither sides is willing to risk any one of their people."

"And yet both sides seem perfectly fine leaving an entire country to deal with the aftereffects?" Keiichi retorted.

Mara shrugged. "You were the fools who thought to attack it and blow the shit out of it." She reminded. "It's no longer our problem. Our biggest concern- _my_ biggest concern-is to evacuate any demons stationed on this plane as soon as possible."

"I don't understand." Skuld protested, "How come Asgard isn't doing anything to help?"

Mara smiled at Lind. "Would you like to explain?" She asked. "Or would you prefer the truth come from a demon's lips?"

Lind grit her teeth. "The incident is being treated as an initiation of an Ultimate Destruction Program." She confessed. "That's why there's such a heavy evacuation. Treating it as a UDP means we _must_ evacuate ASAP, and…" She hesitated, staring at Mara, who gestured her onwards before finally turning to face the Norns and Keiichi fully. "…and we aren't allowed to get involved."

Keiichi paled. "What?" The word came out a breathless whisper, and numbly Keiichi pushed his way forward, moving past Skuld and stepping in front of Urd, who retreated to stand at Skuld's side.

Without thinking, Skuld reached out and grabbed her sister's hand. Urd squeezed it gently.

"What do you mean you aren't allowed to get involved?" The man's voice trembled ever so gently, and Belldandy looked at him worriedly. "My…there are innocent people here." He said. "People who had nothing to do with this-this _thing_ popping up out of nowhere. How could you just…just _abandon_ them like that?"

Lind pursed her lips. "It's not my decision." She said, "This is direction straight from the Almighty Himself."

Behind her Mara nodded. "He passed similar warnings to the Daimakaicho." Mara confessed, "The mortals of this plane have initiated their own UDP, therefore neither side is to involve themselves in what happens next." The demon scowled.

"The Dark Lady was mighty upset when she left that meeting." Her cousin continued. "Five demons were beat within an inch of their lives because they had the bad idea to ask for details." He scratched the bridge of his nose. "…We started making a wide berth around her until she actually ordered us into the field to help mine cousin retrieve demons."

"So Hild won't help either?" Keiichi's voice was tight with suppressed rage. Quietly Belldandy rested a hand on his shoulder, the action seeming to have the intended effect of calming him. "I-my family is here though. My parents-Keima and Takano, Megumi, the gang at the Motor Club, Chihiro…" The man buried his face in a hand. "Are you telling me I'm supposed to just abandon them?" He demanded. "How could you ask me to do something like that?"

"Well, for starters, the Heaven's aren't asking you-they're _telling_ you." Mara snorted. "And no one said the Daimakaicho wasn't going to help." The woman dug into a pocket of her blue jeans, pulling out a small vial. "Catch, Belldandy." She tossed it to the woman, who easily caught it with two hands.

"What is it?" She asked, staring at the vial in curiosity.

"All the help the Daimakaicho will offer you with the UDP active." Mara replied. She glanced at Keiichi. "You wanted a choice? That's your choice."

"But what _is_ it?" Urd demanded, her face heated. "And why shouldn't I take that blasted potion and crush it beneath my heel right now?"

Mara shrugged, unconcerned. "You'll have to see if Belldandy and her man will allow you to do it, first." She replied. "All gods and demons have to evacuate, and that includes any mortals connected to them via the Gate." She pointed to the potion. "But a goddess who decides to live a mortal life is an exception."

"What?" Startled, Belldandy held the potion out at length, staring at the object as one might a rabid dog on a taunt rope. "But-why would she..?"

"Because for whatever reason, the Daimakaicho _likes_ you, Belldandy." Mara replied. "You and your man both. And we demons are all about choices. What you hold in your hand right there is a very _special_ potion. One that will bind your spirit to the third-dimensional body you now wear in a more permanent fashion. You'll be deregistered as a goddess and your form will cease its immortality. With that, you'll live and die as a mortal, right beside your man." Mara smiled; a dark one deep with maliciousness. "For better or worse…but only if you so choose to drink it."

Silence descended within the shrine, and Belldandy stared down at the potion with wide eyes.

"Belldandy…" Urd whispered, "…Bell…give me the potion. We don't know if she's telling the truth."

Belldandy ignored her though. Instead she looked to Keiichi, who stared back at her, his expression torn. "Bell…" He whispered. "I…you shouldn't do it."

"But Keiichi…" The goddess bit her lip, and Skuld could feel her heart race just a bit faster. Anxiously she glanced between Keiichi and Belldandy.

"Big Sister…" Her voice came out a scared whimper, and a part of her felt disgusted at the sound of her voice. "You-you can't! You'll be stuck here, without us! And then whatever is going to happen to everyone…it'll happen to you too."

Belldandy said nothing though, staring numbly down at the potion. Across from her Mara continued. "She's right you know," She continued. "Anything could happen to this realm with the Anomalies dead. There's nothing to guarantee that you and your man will live out a long, fulfilling life."

"Give me the potion, Belldandy." Urd continued, her eyes darting anxiously between the potion and Mara. "Don't do this to yourself. Don't even consider it." The woman glanced at the Valkyrie, who was similarly tensed. "Lind…"

The Valkyrie acknowledged the Elder Norn with a barely noticeable gesture, and together the two goddesses inched closer to Belldandy.

Keiichi noticed. "Hey, wait a second, we haven't even come to a decision yet!" He protested.

"Of course not!" The blonde demon barked, "And they won't let you, either! But then, that is why we demons are here." His smile was feral. "We have no love for humans; however as they were born of a god's madness and the flesh of a demon, neither will we abandon them. That is the freedom of a demon. That is the freedom of _man_."

Unnoticed by all but Skuld, Keiichi slowly entwined his fingers with Belldandy's.

As one Urd and Lind lunged, intent on wrestling the potion from Belldandy's fingers. And just as quickly so too did the demons pounce, leaping atop Norn and Valkyrie as Goddess and Mortal turned and bolted. The demon at their back offered them no resistance, though when Skuld moved to chase after them, he stepped up to bar her path.

"Not this time, Little Godling."

She kicked him in the balls.

He went down with a broken whimper, and Skuld leapt over him, chasing after Belldandy and Keiichi as the two raced out of the house, not even slowing for shoes in their efforts to put distance between themselves and the others. In the hallway behind her she could hear Urd's shouts and bestial snarls from the demons.

The child did not look back. Instead, like the two before her, she raced out of the house, chasing after her older sister and Keiichi as fast as her two legs could carry her. "No, no _no!_ " Skuld cried. "Belldandy! Stop, don't do this! _Please!"_

For a brief moment Belldandy looked back at her, her face conflicted…yet the goddess did not stop running.

If anything, she and Keiichi ran harder.

The youth swore an oath she'd heard Urd use a time or two, and then called upon her robots. "Sigel! Banpei! Get out here, now!"

There was no response.

Anxiety tore into her gut like a ravenous wolf. "Banpei?! Sigel?!" She cried again, receiving much the same dead response as before. And yet Belldandy and Keiichi were growing further away by each passing moment; there was no time to stop and worry over her creations.

Behind her, an explosion rocked the foundation of the house, propelling Skuld forward and to the ground. Grunting, the girl picked herself up and turned, looking back to what had grown to become her home in the past several years.

There was nothing left.

Nothing but a flaming wreckage of broken boards and shattered tile.

And Urd.

Urd stood amongst the wreckage, her silhouette dark against the flames at her back. Someone, no _Mara_ , was held in her grasp, raised high above the Norn's head with one hand around her throat. The demon clawed and kicked at the goddess to no affect. Another form, Lind, rose from the wreckage, followed by a silhouette she didn't recognize; that of one of the demons who'd come to inhabit the shrine.

Together they attacked Urd, bringing the woman down and freeing the demon in her clutches. Urd responded with a monstrous bellow, and then directed her focus to her newest targets. The two soldiers worked together with a communion shared only by seasoned warriors, and together with magic and brute strength, assaulted the Norn.

Their attacks did nothing to the woman.

Like ragdolls Urd batted the two combatants to the side, catching the demon by the leg and throwing him back into the fire. She easily caught a punch from Lind, and with a strength Skuld knew she didn't have the Norn lifted the woman up and slammed her to the ground, forming an impact crater around the Valkyrie's body. Straightening, the goddess ground her heel into the warrior's stomach, and Skuld felt a shiver race down her spine at the ragged cry that tore from Lind's throat.

The girl crawled to her feet, her heart in her throat. "Urd! What are you doing!"

She took a step towards her sister, only to freeze as the woman immediately cast her gaze upon Skuld.

A pair of red eyes glared at her.

Urd's lips peeled back in a bestial snarl, and with a deep growl the woman abandoned her initial prey in favor of stalking towards her new target. As she grew near, Skuld could just make out the five pointed star on her forehead. "Oh no…" She heard herself whisper. The child couldn't move. "Oh…Almighty…Urd, what did you do?" She breathed, trembling as the freshly-turned demon advanced on her.

"Bell…dan…dy." The Elder Norn growled out, and with a start Skuld realized the Norn wasn't staring at her, but at the trees past her, off in the direction Keiichi and Belldandy had vanished.

"No…" Skuld shook her head in denial, taking a step back. "You-are you so afraid for her that you'd become a demon?" Her voice trembled. "But-" revelation hit her, and the girl's eyes widened. "That's what Hild wants." Suddenly everything became frighteningly clear. "That's what Hild _wants_." She repeated. "That's why she gave Belldandy the potion…she knew what would happen. _That it would push Belldandy and Keiichi into a corner._ A voice whispered in her head. _That it would force them to make an immediate decision. That Keiichi wouldn't abandon his family, that Belldandy would not abandon Keiichi, and that the both of them would rather choose a painful, mortal death to the heavens, leaving behind everything Keiichi knew and loved._

 _That Urd would know, and would do everything in her power to stop it._

Even if it meant giving into her demonic heritage once more, where she easily fell into the category of demons Mara was 'retrieving' for Niflheim.

The youth shook her head, her eyes wide as tears began to leak from her eyes. "No…Urd please, you need to stop." Hesitantly she stepped forward, the motion fulling bringing the turned-demon's gaze down on her. She flinched under its hungry gaze. "You-you need to turn back!" She cried. "Don't you get it? This is what Hild _wants_! Don't you realize they'll drag you to Niflheim if you stay like this? You need to _change back!"_

Yet the demon was unresponsive to her cries. _"Bell…dan…dy."_ She repeated, and almost zombie-like she lurched forward, fueled by the single-minded desire to find their middle sister.

"Sku..ld…" A hand reached out and grabbed Urd's leg, giving the woman pause. Skuld looked down, finding Lind, beaten and bloody, at its source. "RUN!" Her cry was broken and hoarse, yet it was enough to spur the youth into action, even as Urd once more placed her attention on the Valkyrie beneath her.

And it was the vicious snarls of a demon's attack and the screams of a Valkyrie that chased after Skuld as she dove into the woods, chasing after her underneath a sky that had grown dark and gray with stormclouds.

It was by pure chance she stumbled upon them.

Keiichi was what gave them away. "Belldandy…I just, I don't know what to do." The man sounded lost and desperate, and for a single moment Skuld felt an alien amount of pity for the mortal. "I mean…what would you do?" He continued. "If…if it came down to your sisters, your parents, your _world_ versus staying with me…what would you do?'

She found the two of them nestled up together against a small cliff face. Above them, the surrounding rock jutted outwards, providing a natural roof for the two, while a heavy cluster of boulders created just enough shelter from any harsh winds. The boulders also made an ample hiding place within the resulting nooks and crannies, and if not for the movement of a shadow and Keiichi's voice, Skuld would have missed them altogether.

Now she silently approached, a piece of her wanting to keep quiet for fear of interrupting the couple's conversation. Even if it was one she was certain she didn't want to hear.

Belldandy was silent for a long moment, and as Skuld crept around the back of the boulders, she caught a glance of the Norn leaning her head against Keiichi's shoulder. "I don't know." She answered quietly. "Such an answer should be simple: We've walked the Gate together and passed it successfully. The obvious choice should be to stay with you. Yet when I place myself from your perspective…" the woman trailed off, and Skuld heard the jingle of glass tapping lightly against a hard surface.

"I want to be with you, Keiichi." She finally decided. "Whatever you decide, I will stand with it."

"And doom you to a short and painful mortal life?" Keiichi countered. He sounded upset. "Belldandy, I can't do that! If it's just me, then fine, I'm okay with that, but you? No. No, it's not fair to you."

There was a shuffle, the gentle rustle of clothes. "But neither is it fair for me to ask you to abandon everything, every _one_ you know and love." She reasoned. "Which is why, regardless of circumstances, I am willing to accept a mortal fate."

"But I'm not." Keiichi persisted. "It's—" The man sighed. "We should have given the bottle to Urd." He confessed. "If we didn't have the choice…"

"Yet that is precisely why Hild gave it to us." Belldandy said gently. "She knew the strife it would bring, and that makes our decision all the more important.

"I know." Keiichi whispered softly. "And I can't stand it…If I'd known…Almighty, I'd have never asked for a choice."

Belldandy hummed in understanding. "Sometimes it is the gift we want most that harm us the greatest. I feel no one understands this more than Hild."

Keiichi snorted, and then to Skuld's surprise, chuckled lightly. "That woman…you know, I hate to say this about anyone, but she's a real _bitch_ when she wants to be, you know that?"

Belldandy sighed, ending it with a soft giggle of her own. "Yes, I suppose your right." She agreed. "She _is_ Urd's mother, after all."

Skuld's jaw fell open and nearly hit the floor.

"Belldany!" She cried, and saw two shadows jump. Wide-eyed, Belldandy peeked out from behind the boulders, her cheeks a light and embarrassed pink.

"Skuld-"

"Save it!" The youth snapped, a part of her surprised with her own anger. "You need to get rid of that potion now and come back with me! Urd's rampaging; I think she might have really hurt Lind! She's already destroyed the house!"

"Urd?" Belldandy's face darkened with concern, and now Keiichi peered over as well. "What do you mean, Skuld? What's wrong with Urd?"

"It's—"

Above their head the sky rumbled with an ominous thunder, and Skuld felt herself grow cold. "Hild…" She whispered, looking to the sky and then back to her Belldandy. "Urd's gone demon!" She cried, "Urd's gone demon over that stupid potion, and Hild's coming to drag her to Niflheim in the mass evacuation!"

The woman's eyes grew wide. "Oh no…" She whispered, and before anyone had time to react the Norn was up and over the boulder in a single bound. "Urd!" She cried, and in a less than a second was gone, leaving Keiichi and Skuld in her wake.

"How bad is it?" Keiichi moved to Skuld's side, and the youth looked up at him. "Urd. How…will this be anything like the Lord of Terror?" He sounded tired. Not even scared or angry anymore. Just…exhausted.

Though it shamed her, Skuld would have been lying if she said she didn't pity the man. "I don't know." She confessed. He'd been absent when Urd had given into her demonic heritage during the Hagall's rebellion, and that had taken nothing short of a antiproton bomb and the risk of all of Niflheim's elimination to bring Urd back to her senses. "I-I really don't know, Keiichi…but we have to do something before Hild gets to her! None of the demons stopped her, and Lind…" She shuddered, recalling the woman's bloodcurling scream.

"I see." Keiichi murmured, before closing his eyes with a sigh. When he opened them once more, a strange sort of resolution had settled within his gaze. "Alright then. Let's go take care of Urd…then…I guess we'll leave for the Heavens, right?"

Skuld stared at him, startled, yet the man's face was calm and certain; the man had made his choice.

Her mouth fell open in surprise. She wanted to tell him off suddenly, to insult him, to scream at him; he was abandoning his family, his race, his _world_! All so that he could join them in the heavens! All so that Belldandy could _stay_ with them in Asgard! He was-

Skuld grit her teeth and looked down. "Yeah, let's go." She said quietly.

He was abandoning _his_ sister so that Belldandy could stay with hers. So that _she_ could have Belldandy.

Wordlessly, Keiichi headed down the path that had initially led the trio to the cliff face, and Skuld watched him go, the man's white shirt disappearing into the foliage like a ghost in the mist.

"…God _damn_ it." She whispered, and followed after as well.

* * *

Hild was already present by the time Keiichi and Skuld emerged from the forest once more.

The courtyard had degraded into a battleground, and from all angles the bodies of the demons who'd occupied their house were strewn about. From where they emerged, Skuld spied Mara's unconscious form lying beside that of the blonde male, wrapped protectively around demon as though trying to protect him from further harm. One demon was unconscious in one of the trees near the trail the duo were on, resting upside down and looking so much like a corpse that Skuld was half-tempted to reach out and touch him, just to see if he had a pulse. Lind was no where to be seen.

And at the center of it all stood Hild, Belldandy, and Urd.

Hild's smile was wild and mad, something that was almost mirrored in Urd's own features. "Now, now Belldandy, was any of that really necessary?" The smile on her face grew to the point where Skuld imagined it would split her face in two. "You know I've only come to retrieve what's mine. And after I was so kind as to offer a solution to your problems, too!" She wagged a finger at the younger woman patronizingly. "You really need to learn when to take a hint, Child…" There was a dangerous edge in her voice, and her eyes were hard, like a pair of sparkling amethysts shining in the reflected light of an inferno. "Gifts are meant to be _used_ , not pondered over like a child's puzzle.

Near Belldandy was Urd. The woman was kneeling a short distance away from Belldandy, her lips peeled back in an animalistic snarl reinforced by the angry growl reverberating in the back of her throat. A strange, almost unnoticeable blue magic bound her to the ground, and rigorously the woman thrashed against it, howling in bestial rage when her bindings did not give. It was Urd who noticed Skuld and Keiichi first, and the woman hissed at them, her eyes flashing a maddening red as she renewed her struggles.

Belldandy didn't so much as glance their way. "There are times when one must ignore such hints in favor of what is truly at stake." She said, her gaze centered on Hild. "And it just so happens that this is one such time." Despite the gravity of the situation, the middle Norn was calm. The woman that had so bolted both from and to the house was absent, leaving in its place an individual completely at ease in her surroundings.

The Daimakaicho narrowed her eyes ever…so…slightly. "So it seems." Hild murmured. "An… _unfortunate_ error on your part, Dear Girl."

Belldandy stood her ground. "I won't let you take her, Hild."

The demon raised a silver brow. "Is that a fact?" She purred. "Then tell me, what do you intend to do in this circumstance?" She inquired, "You're little Valkyrie friend was quite… _insistent_ on your return. Do you plan on taking dear Urd with you as well? In her current state?" The woman swept her arm to Urd, and Belldandy flinched. "Have you any idea just what they'd do to her, as she is?" Hild pressed, "What your…people would do to my daughter? Your _sister?"_ Hild released a bark of laughter. "Please…you know as well as I that she'd be in better hands with me. "

And would you leave your precious…hmm…how to say it, _in-laws_ on this doomed world as well?" The Daimakaicho smiled aggressively, then took a step towards Belldandy.

The Norn didn't move. "Would you _truly_ abandon the family your Hubby holds so dear?" She pried. "Would you be able to stand the _guilt_ that came with knowing who you sacrificed on this plain?" Hild's gaze suddenly moved to Keiichi, and the man sucked in a deep breath. "…Would Keiichi?" The question was said aloud, yet somehow Skuld knew it was not directed towards any particular person. Something in the Daimakaicho's gaze was off…"

"Tell me, Belldandy, would he?" Hild turned to face the duo fully now, and Skuld felt the hair raise on the nape of her neck. "When he knows what may befall his family…A life of anarchy…a life of uncertainty…" She was moving towards them now, and unconsciously Skuld moved in front of the man, gently pushing him back in an effort to keep the distance between themselves and the Demon Queen. "One of salt and death…or perhaps madness and murder…"

The woman stopped suddenly, and smiled. "Tell me Keiichi Morisato, what do you think?"

And with her words Keiichi fell to his knees, clutching his head and screaming in pain.

"Keiichi!" Uncertain of what was happening, Skuld knelt down beside the man, yet the mortal did not seem to notice. She couldn't even say he _saw_ her, for his eyes were glazed over and unseeing, the pupils dilated as though staring at something far away. Scared, she grabbed his shoulder, and the man looked towards her. What he saw the youth could only guess at, for he screamed all the louder and threw her from his person, staggering backwards and scrambling into the underbrush in a vain effort to escape whatever nightmare engulfed him.

"Keiichi?!" Belldandy's voice rose above his screams, yet the man seemed unable to hear her. The goddess moved to rush towards them, only to freeze as Hild once more directed her attention to the Norn.

"Ah ah ah!" Hild wagged a finger at the woman. "Nope! Not this time, Little Girl!" A growl was growing more and more predominant in the Daimakaicho's voice, and it was at that time that Skuld realized they were in _deep_ shit. "You picked the wrong day to toy with me, Belldandy. Now, I'll give you a _choice_ ," Skuld was really starting to dislike that word, _"_ You can either release Urd into my care, or you can let your husband suffer an early onset of…what did they name it again? Ah, that's right, 'White Chlorination Syndrome'. But you better decide fast, Belldandy, because my patience has been _tried_ , and it's nearing its limit."

The woman's eyes widened at the Daimakaicho's words, and the Norn's face tightened into a grimace, torn between that of her sister and that of her husband.

Skuld felt her chest constrict. _The choice is obvious._ She thought to herself, her voice failing her as she looked to her sister with large, dark eyes. _The choice is_ obvious _. I know you love Keiichi, Big Sister, but please,_ please, _don't choose Keiichi. Don't let Hild take Urd away, Belldandy. Don't let her tear our family apart!_

Belldandy bit her lip, growing more anxious with each passing second

And then Urd spoke.

" _Seal…_ " The word came out in a barely-understandable hiss, and abruptly Skuld and Belldandy looked to their wayward sister. _"Seal…"_ Urd repeated, " _Seal, seal seal!"_ The word became a chant, one so steady and rhythmic that even Hild paused to stare at her daughter.

"What is she…"

Yet Belldandy understood.

Belldandy _always_ understood.

It took less than a second for the Norn to call upon her full powers as a goddess First-Class.

Recognition dawned on Hild's face only to be quickly swallowed by a look of sheer, primal _rage_. "Don't you _dare_ , Belldandy!"

Oh, but she _did_ dare. She very much dared so, and as a spell began to form in Hild's hand, so too did Skuld, recognizing the futility of her own effort and yet hoping only to spare her sister a few extra seconds.

From within the affectionately-dubbed 'Hammer-space' where she stored all weapons of interest, Skuld withdrew her most powerful bombs; ten of them, to be exact, and an interdimensional shield as an afterthought to protect herself and the fallen Keiichi. Working with a speed that would have astounded those who knew her, the girl erected the shield, and then made a single announcement:

"Hey Hild! How well can you juggle?"

Hild, a snarl on her face, did not respond, instead throwing the magic build up initially meant for Belldandy towards Skuld. The girl responded with tossing two of her bombs, and then looked away as magic and explosives collided in a terrible display of destruction.

Belldandy didn't even flinch.

Not waiting for the resulting debris to clear, Skuld immediately tossed two more bombs in Hild's direction.

Yet Hild had greater priorities now, and as her silhouette grew visible Skuld saw that the woman didn't even pause in her step, merely deflecting the munitions and hardly flinching when the bombs instead detonated against her.

Dust and smoke grew haphazardly through the area with each resulting explosion, and the air grew thick and black to the point where it hurt to breathe. Only the Daimakaicho's eyes, red with the sheen of a demon's bloodlust, remained visible. And through it all; however, Belldandy did not stray from her spell, nor did Hild pause in her step.

"That's enough Hild!" Another form barreled into the demon, and it was only Lind's voice that gave the Valkyrie away. The woman collided into the Daimakaicho with enough force to push the demon back several feet, yet as the air cleared a second glance revealed that Lind was unsuccessful in her initial attack, both fists caught in Hild's grasp.

"You shouldn't have done that, Valkyrie." Gone was the anger, gone was the growl, and in its place nothing but a silent, calm whisper emerged from the Daimakaicho's throat. The demon bore down on the Valkyrie, and Lind's eyes, bright and golden with power, widened in pain as Hild _squeezed._

Lind grit her teeth, and Hild leered down at her. The Valkyrie's legs buckled, and then with a gasp the woman fell to one leg, giving the Daimakaicho a further advantage as the demon bore her weight and strength down on the warrior. Small, audible _pops_ grew audible, and with each one Lind trembled, her face scrunched up in a grimace of agony.

Hild began to twist her hands, and it was at that point that Lind broke, releasing a howl of pain so grotesque that Skuld clamped her hands over her ears in the hopes of blocking it out. "Do it Belldandy! Hurry up and finish it!" The Valkyrie screamed, her voice cracking and breaking before suddenly falling to silence as the Daimakaicho kneed the woman hard in the face.

The enraged demon released the Valkyrie then, and Hild released her, watching expressionless as the woman slumped to the ground. The woman spared her previous opponent not even a glance in favor of Belldandy and Urd, who still continued her mindless chant of _'seal seal seal!'_

The spell was almost complete, and with a sudden urgency the Daimakaicho vanished, reappearing in front of Urd right as Belldandy finished her spell.

And with a victorious, rebellious smile on her face, the demonic Urd flipped her mother off right before she vanished in a seal, her final words clear and concise. " _Fuck you, Hild."_

For a long, tense moment Hild remained stationary, frozen in her initial position of where she'd reached for her only child. Slowly, agonizingly so it seemed, the woman then straightened, and turned to Belldandy.

The woman clutched something tightly in her hand; the seal, no doubt, and immediately retreated from the Daimakaicho, teleporting from her spot and then to Skuld's and Keiichi's side. The woman kneeled quickly, her arms moving around Keiichi's trembling body, and she graced Skuld with a single look. "Run." She whispered.

A shriek arose in the compound, inhuman and terrible, and melding with Keiichi's own screams. Shaking Skuld looked to Hild.

The expression on her face was _murderous._

Belldandy grabbed the girl's arm and yanked her, and Skuld once more looked at her sister. "Run!" She snapped, and passed something into the girl's hands. "Now, before you get caught in her spell as well!"

"But—"

" _Go_ Skuld!"

So she did, turning and running through the trees, clutching tight whatever it was that Belldandy had passed her. Hild was screaming something behind her, yet the girl was too terrified to stop and listen. Instead, she looked over her shoulder, sliding to a stop as she watched Hild toss a spell at Keiichi and Belldandy.

She watched as Belldandy closed her eyes in acceptance, holding Keiichi tightly against her body.

And with tears cascading down her face, Skuld watched as the Norn of the Present Belldandy and her husband, Keiichi Morisato, vanished in a flash of violet light.

Even with Keiichi gone, Skuld could still hear someone screaming, and it wasn't until her throat grew raw, that Hild looked her way, that the youth realized the sound was coming from _her_.

Turning, the youth once more resumed her run, racing into the forest and down the mountain, running as fast as her legs would carry her. At some point she lost her footing from…a tree root, perhaps, a pile of dead leaves, maybe even a slippery rock and the girl fell and rolled, tumbling and screaming as the world around her blurred into a dizzying blur of browns and greens and grays.

It was a fallen tree that finally stopped her roll. The girl slammed the back of her head into it with enough force to break the wood, yet splintered though it was, it did not yield, leaving the youth to lay in a world of swirling treetops and dancing stars. Sobbing, the girl curled in on herself, wrapping her arms around her legs, her entire body protesting every movement with a fresh throb, a new burst of pain.

Yet she ignored it, burying her face against muddy knees and crying, waiting for Hild to appear and finish her off as she had Belldandy and Keiichi.

She waited there for minutes, hours, until her tears fell no more and her sobs grew to little more than hiccups and silence. Until the pain in her body grew more painful than the dread in her chest, and her joints grew stiff and protested each movement.

Through it all, Hild did not appear.

No one did, for that matter.

It was not until the light grew dim and the clouds cleared to a clean sunset that Skuld uncurled from where she laid. There, dirty with dead leaves, dirt, and tears, she examined what Belldandy and slipped to her. With it, fresh tears began to fall from her eyes, for it was the potion Marller had tossed to Belldandy, and it was empty of its contents. Empty of all but a seal, which she felt only on the very back of her conscious.

The empty vial held Urd.

Recognizing what she held in her hands, what the empty vial implied of Belldandy, the young Norn held the bottle tightly against her chest and cried once more.

For the sisters that had been lost; one to a seal, one to humanity's mortality.

For the man who'd been lost to a demon's retaliation.

And for the Valkyrie who'd given all she had so that her elder sisters might make their choices.

It was in such a state, asleep and clutching the vial with all her might, that Ansuz discovered her, the child's sleep so deep and all-encompassing, like that of Belldandy in times where her energy was scare, that Ansuz picked her up and took her home. Home to Asgard, where there were no mortals. Home to the Heavens, where there were no demons. Home to divinities, where giants and dragons were never shot down by Man's weaponry.

And in the forest where she'd rested, upon the soil where a goddess's tears had fallen, in the light of a full moon, a silver flower grew, blossomed, and shined, while in the ashes of broken city, salt began to rain from the sky.

* * *

 _Comments of a Madwoman: This fic is in response to the Skuld's World Fanfic Challenge for2016 from the Goddess Relief Office Forum. This is the prologue._

 _Notes: This story is a crossover with the Drakengard/Nier series, and will follow its own strange chronological order regarding the Nier storyline before delving back into Drakengard. The main character will be Skuld, with only the occasional other A!MG character mentioned at key points. All other characters will be primarily from Nier, before eventally delving into Drakengard, explaining the dragon and giant._

 _The story takes place after the manga ends and Ending E of Drakengard 1, which becomes the prologue for Nier. The red dragon (and it's rider, unmentioned) is Angel(us) and Caim from Drakengard 1. The Giant is known as the 'Queen-Beast' or Mother Angel, and is the final boss of Endings D and E in Drakengard 1._


	2. Ending Echo

_2003/11/04 22:53_

 _Was debriefed on the project. It's a highly classified case. No room for rejection. Overall I'm extremely unwilling to accept this project. In the first place, what the hell do they want a particle physics specialist like me to do?_

 _2003/11/09 23:06_

 _Saw the object assumed to be the cause for the incident. It must be some kind of bad joke. Who would believe that a 'dragon' and 'giant' fell on Shinjuku? However, it's true that the substance's energy characteristics are abnormal. The plan was to begin detailed investigations tomorrow. Now I understand why I've been called to this project._

 _2003/12/04 22:45_

 _The food here is really bad. It's like they were trying to make do by stuffing tons of MSG into it._

 _Well, it's free, so I can't really complain that much. But I really wish they'd improve, if only for the sake of keeping the researchers motivated._

 _2004/02/08 23:17_

 _Another victim of the rare disease appeared in the department. I've heard some bad rumors about this. Something about the researched particle being the cause. It's true that the substance is shrouded in mysteries. I'm sure some people would buy that._

 _I'm worried that the research will be delayed._

 _2004/02/22/ 23:43_

 _Contacted by Watanabe today. There's a high possibility that the particle is the cause of the rare disease after all. Direct contact with the particle or patients exhibiting the rare disease is forbidden. Research is only going to get harder from now on. However, it's pretty much been confirmed that the particles which make up the giant change their energy levels according to the state of the observer. But what on earth are they reacting to?_

 _Variations in heat and brainwaves? Changes in the water amount in the atmosphere due to sweat? Some of them are saying that it's reacting to changes in a person's mental state, but that's just occult talk, not science._

 _2004/02/25 23:07_

 _To investigate the relationship between the mysterious disease and the particle, the corpse was moved into the research room. My first impression was that of a white statue. Similar to recordings of the giant that I've been shown. I thought it was turning white due to denatured proteins, but it was composed of purely NaCl – in other words, it's turning into salt. It's much higher than the amount in a human body. Where is it absorbing the sodium from? The victims are said to suffer from auditory hallucinations, so maybe the grey matter is getting destroyed first, but that doesn't explain the high concentration of salt produced by the corpse. Oh well, I'll leave that part to the neuroscientists._

 _2004/07/04 02:18_

 _Tired today. Won't they lessen the amount of useless report sessions and meetings? They're a waste of time._

 _2005/02/24 01:15_

 _Contacted by Kobayashi. Succeeded in cultivating tissue D from the sea of origin. The density of particle G seems to be important after all. Now research on tissue D could proceed smoothly. But the vitality of tissue D is quite surprising. It's rather resistant to heat and impact. Planning to perform experiments on its resistance on a grander scale._

 _2005/03/08 00:45_

 _No matter how much I look into it, the energy change accompanying the cultivation of tissue D defies the law of conservation of energy. It's not even on a micro level like quantum physics – how could you explain the energy failure on such a macro level? I guess the remaining energy came from unknown particle G after all._

 _2005/11/15 02:11_

 _Seems like there was some sort of accident during the experiment on tissue D's resistance. Are we being blocked off or what? I don't get that much information these days. I feel like we're doing too many rash experiments just to get some results._

 _Wonder what got the higher up's knickers in a twist._

 _2005/12/24 01:45_

 _Christmas Eve. Ever since the accident, security level has been bumped up to red, so I can't even leave. I told my husband to get a present for my daughter, so let's hope he didn't forget. However, a teddy bear might've been a bit too childish for her. Statistics dictate that girls in her age group like stuffed toys, but standard deviation for preferences is simply too big, so I can't really put too much trust in that. I'll ask her what she wants next time._

 _2006/01/08 01:33_

 _Rumors about black monsters are spreading. Mass hysteria due to stress from the recent state of affairs? Not only are absurd experiments being continued, security is abnormally tight. What exactly is going on? Is it related to how investigation reports on tissue D aren't coming this way anymore?_

 _2006/04/15 02:22_

 _Recently I haven't really been feeling well. I guess I'm pretty tired._

 _The recent mainstream law of conservation of energy expansion theory that sprung from the parallel dimension explanation works perfectly fine with calculations, but I can't help but think it's forcibly tacked on. Moreover, saying that the giant and dragon are from parallel worlds is sci-fi territory. As a scientist, I can't accept this._

 _My ears are ringing._

 _2006/04/19 03:11_

 _I'm in really bad shape. There's some buzzing in my ears that sounds like bells. It's a hindrance to sleep._

 _2006/04/22 06:24_

 _I_

 _ca n_

 _he_

 _ar_

 _so n ds_

 _-Last known journal entry of Investigation Report Beta_

 _Assessment: After an accident involving a tissue sample extracted from a cadaver suffering from White Chlorination Syndrome, Section Charlie of the Investigation Team was shut down and placed into a state of quarantine. The doctors and scientists examining the corpse were directly exposed to WCS in what is likely an airborne form, and it is probable that this led to the spread of WCS throughout the quarantined section. Victims afflicted by WCS began exhibiting signs of fatigue and auditory hallucinations, with additional reports recounting individuals hearing a 'voice' that spoke to them. Patients exhibiting later signs of WCS began to display signs of mental deterioration, some of which clawed at their eyes and began shouting nonsense. 98.56 percent of victims in the final stages of WCS were witnessed via video feed falling into a comatose state before their bodies began to chlorinate and dissolve._

 _1.44 percent of individuals involved were seen exhibiting highly aggressive behavior, appearing to lose all manners of higher thought and devolving to an almost animal-like base. These strange…anomalies were seen viciously attacking other patients in the earlier stages of WCS. They eventually expired when those who'd yet to be affected banded together and killed the anomalies through use of chemical acids, broken glass, and makeshift weapons made from cleaning supplies._

 _At this time, it is unknown what caused the change between the anomalies and those in the latest stages of WCS. What was noted was:_

 _The anomalies showed no signs of chlorinization._

 _The anomalies moved with an almost 'pack-minded' intent._

 _We can gather no samples due to the high-level of contamination within section Charlie._

* * *

 _2010_

Skuld looked up from the report before her and rubbed her eyes. This was the fifth such article she'd read in the past five hours, and with no breaks in-between her vision was beginning to swim. Frowning, the young woman leaned back in her chair. It squeaked, much to her irritation, yet there was nothing to be done about _that_ , and took a moment to focus on the ceiling. The tiles above her head were a pristine, smooth, white, similar to the walls and the floor and just about every other damned room in the cursed facility she was working in, each of which reeked heavily of antiseptic like that of a hospital room.

It was giving her a headache.

"Right, time for a break." She took a moment to spin her chair in childlike glee, causing it to squeak even more obscenely than before. The woman stopped it suddenly, and took a moment to enjoy the dizzying effect of watching the surrounding walls spin and contort around her as her eyes played catch-up. When the moment passed she rose and stretched her arms over her head, before letting them drop lackluster to her side.

The office was a sparsely decorated. A computer terminal off in one corner with an over-arching computer desk rested behind the door. Papers and signs depicting reminders and phone numbers hung from sticky notes and lay taped to walls, with a single picture depicting Mount Fuji resting on the adjacent wall. It was a nice picture, one of Mount Fuji from before the anomalies. One of the previous occupants had hung it up and had never bothered to take it with them, and Skuld left it where it was; a relic of a time that no longer existed, from when the world was hopeful and full of life and joy.

Not anymore.

With a sigh she leaned over her desk, locking her computer before quickly retreating from the room. As she left a coworker looked up from the computer he was diligently typing away at. "Caught up?"

Skuld smiled. It felt forced. "Only about half way." She admitted. "These reports are so monotonous. I feel I'll go mad if I read another page."

The man snickered. He was an older gentleman, one of her 'seniors' who'd taken her under her wing when she'd first arrived in the office. That had been years ago though, and she'd long since worked her way past him. It was weird, supervising one of the very people who'd shown her the ropes of the Lab, but the awkwardness that had initially come with it had long since faded.

The man, Takashi, chuckled. "Agreed. They read like stereo instructions, am I right?"

Skuld scoffed good-naturedly. "I think even stereo instructions would be simpler that these reports." She shook her head. "Anyways, I'm heading out for a coffee break. You want anything?"

Takashi shook his head. "Tea is all I need, and I've already got myself a cup." He gestured to a silver thermos resting on his desk.

He smirked when Skuld made a face. "You enjoy that. I'm off in pursuit of some real caffeine." Nodding her farewell, the woman headed out, leaving the main office and venturing down glaringly-white hallways towards the break room. She passed coworkers and additional staff who worked in other sections, some of which nodded to her, more who ignored her, others so nose-deep in clipboards lined with charts of data that they didn't even see her.

The break room at least had a bit of color. Someone, possibly a bored employee, had taken the time to paint the walls an off-tan, breaking the strain of white and giving the room a needed bit of warmth. Another person, possibly two, had dragged in one of the older executive couches into the break room, its fabric since torn and stained from years of abuse and neglect. A vending machine stood off in one corner lined with canned coffee, tea, and soda, while in another corner a large refrigerator sat, it's shelves lined with the heaven's only knew what sort of science experiments. Between them both was a stained marble sink and on its shelf rested a coffee pot and an electronic water boiler.

Reaching into one of the cupboards above the sink, the woman withdrew one of several mugs. Mickey Mouse, faded and yellow with age, smiled up at her from where he rested beside other iconic figures such as Rei Ayanami, Betty Boop, and the mustachioed plumber Mario. Listlessly she grabbed Micky, placing the mug off to one side as she checked the coffee pot. It was close to two in the afternoon now, and the remaining coffee had turned to a cold sludge. Making a face, she dumped it and rinsed it out in the old stained sink, then began preparing a new pot.

As the machine began to gurgle and grumble, Skuld moved to the couch, sinking into the worn cushions with a content sigh. Despite its age and abuse, there was still life yet in the old thing; a peaceful, soothing whisper that she could hear just at the edge of her mind, singing sweet lullabies that enticed the mind to sleep. It worked, too. Many a time she'd caught a coworker napping on the old thing, and she herself was guilty of the crime on long nights where the next work day was mere hours away.

Those nights, she didn't have the stamina she'd once had.

Ice cream was a novelty now, and certainly not something she could easily stock up on. She sighed wistfully. _I miss those days. More and more I miss those days…when I could work on a project for days at a time without rest, only leaving for mochi ice cream or to bug Urd for TV rights or tell off Keiichi…_

She frowned at the thought. Those days were always accompanied by the gentle scent of Belldandy's tea. That had been years ago. _And you're no longer the little goddess you once were. How does it feel, finally being an adult?_ She rubbed her eyes, recalling the many documents still resting in her computer awaiting her review. It felt pretty fucking shitty, to be perfectly honest. _None of us really want to be an adult. It only seems appealing in childhood because we lacked the understanding of what came with adulthood. We want the independence, the freedom, and the respect that comes with adulthood. No one ever bothers to mention the burdens that accompany it or the responsibilities that fall on our shoulders._

How long had it been? Since the Abominations? Since Keiichi and Belldandy? It was hard for her to keep up. The days, the months, the years all seemed to mesh into each other with every use of the Gate between Earth and Asgard. Time became meaningless in such travels; one day, there were trees and birds and people were simply investigating the white ash that had begun to rain down from Shinjuku. A couple of days back home, and she'd return to find a strange new disease, this 'White Chlorination Syndrome' or WCS, afflicting Shinjuku residents and turning them to salt. Another trip, and suddenly Shinjuku was in lock-down, no longer a city but a quarantine zone lined with barbwire fences and JSDF control points, where the guards wore radiation suits and those trapped inside risked their lives at gunpoint in the hopes of escape.

 _And now it's come to this_. She thought. _Where they've nuked Shinjuku and spread WCS all across the planet._

It was a despairing thought, one made all the more so with the revelation that in that time, there'd been no progress on finding a cure, of even finding a _cause_ for WCS, even as new horrors rose from the ashes of the city now labeled as Point Zero.

Yet though the Red Eye and Legion were a problem, no, a _threat_ to Japan, they were not her problem.

Not right now at least.

 _The dragon is here._

And that was why she was here. For the dragon, which had been felled by JSDF fighters so many years before. Unlike the Giant ( _Scarface, they'd labeled it)_ this one hadn't dissolved into a cloud of ash. In fact, from the reports she'd read, its body had remained remarkably intact for having been assaulted by missiles, and had quickly been retrieved by the Japanese Government, hidden away from prying eyes even as those who'd borne witness to its flight littered online forums with questions and pictures.

Yet a body preserved still housed the remains of a spirit, though it'd be little more than afterimages and feelings, final thoughts and sights and smells. Like the couch she sat on now, it was little more than a relic of the past, yet one that could still be used by those around it.

Which was what the Japanese government had signed her up for, after all. In their books, Skuld Tyrdottor specialized in cellular diversity and contagions and was being paid by the United Nations as a foreign consultant. That made her valuable to the Japanese government, as someone else signed her paychecks while they got to harvest her skills.

And she got to examine the dragon.

But first came the paperwork. Always the goddamned paperwork. Yggdrasil, mortals were more uptight with policies and paperwork than even the most stringent of gods. It made her wonder if demons fared any better.

The coffee pot hissed and gurgled in completion, and with a sigh Skuld rose once more. Mickey was waiting, after all.

* * *

 _Year 3361_

Klaxons were blaring.

Deep within the bowels of the earth, sirens wailed and screeched, dancing with red light as inactive terminals suddenly flared to life. Green text of gibberish words, numbers, symbols, flew across the screen in a rain of activity as dim, yellow lights unwillingly sputtered to life. A network of biomechanical roots connected to long, proboscis tubes churned and twitched with the first activity in centuries as a black pod was illuminated with an unearthly green glow. The pod released a hiss, and then a thick stream erupted from the capsule, releasing a heavy mist that blanketed the grid floor upon which the pod rested. From farther within the room, loud beeps and cries mingled with the howling klaxons, and with it several creatures emerged, mechanical in natures as they sputtered forth on rusted axels and tiny wheels. They twirled and danced mindlessly to the sirens around them, releasing their own mechanical cries as they circled each other, the pod, and the large computer terminal that continued to transcribe its long wall of endless text of prattle.

One of them, a robot that looked like a series of boxes on wheels, lurched towards the pod, a steel tentacle ending in a clamp rising from its top and snapping helplessly at the pod. It was quickly overtaken by something that looked a bit more advanced; a slimmer, sleeker model with a noticeable head shaped like a long-nosed bullet. This one had something closer to arms, and with a series of beeps and squeaks it directed it's primitive partner to the computer mainframe, withdrawing a long cable from the box's 'head' and plugging it into a USB port. The screen flickered, and then the wall of text vanished, replaced by a white screen that began displaying a series of ones and zeros. Another robot, this one bearing the resemblance of an old _Poo-Chi_ toy the size of a mastiff, continued to circle the pod, the wheels that comprised of its feet screaming from long years of disuse. It released a mechanical bark, and then wheeled over to the bullet-headed robot, smashing into it repeatedly and gaining the bullet-bot's attention. It stared at the large mecha-hound, which proceeded to yip at it…and promptly kicked it on its side.

The dog yipped and whined with its electronic voice, its gears buzzing and churning and wheels spinning as it tried to right itself. It guttered a plume of black diesel smoke in desperation, and the bullet robot almost seemed to moan at its actions, bringing a three-pronged hand to its long nose as it shook its head in something that could have almost passed as disdain. The dog continued to yap haplessly, however the bullet ignored it in favor of the pod. The black lid of its surface flared to life, and across its dark screen, bright white text surged into being, displaying charts and graphs and the vitals of whatever lay within. The bullet examined them all through a series of sensor orbs lined along the center of its massive head, and then removed a cable of its own from its broad neck. The metallic creature removed a panel near the pod's screen, revealing the multiple ports within, and plugged the cable into a USB port. A high whine emerged from the bullet's head as gears and fans that hadn't been used in centuries spun up to speed once more, and then new text began to flit across the pod's screen, mingling with the information provided as the screen began to flash.

There came a large exhale of air from the pod that blew dust from its vents, and after a minute a green light began to flash across the pod's screen accompanied by an approving chime. Its sensors flashed a bright yellow, and in response, the information upon the screen faded, revealing the contents kept within. Something within the pod began to whir, and with it large warning _bweep, bweep bweep_ s drowned out the howling klaxons and mechanical dog's yappings. A hiss of white steam filled the compound, and then the pod's screen began to rise up, releasing its sole occupant from its chambers.

The bullet bowed, peering inside the small pod and illuminating a small light within its nose. The beam was broad but bright, highlighting the face of the human within and revealing feminine features cast within a European face. Long, black waves of hair cascaded down either side of her face, and as the beam met her closed eyes they scrunched up. The face turned away with a soft groan, and the bullet tilted its long head to one side. _"Mother, you need to wake up. Yggdrasil is malfunctioning and we do not have the expertise necessary to repair him."_ The voice that emerged from the robot, though mechanical, was that of a young girl. It paused to look at the ceiling as something large and heavy shuddered above it. The dog whined pitifully. " _Please Mother!"_ The automaton tried again. " _His roots are spreading through the forest and killing the trees! He's deluded himself into believing he can merge mechanical components with vegetation, and it's ruining everything! Please wake up, Mother!"_

Within the pod the woman slowly roused, grimacing somewhat as she opened dark eyes on an even darker world. For a moment she stared at the robot without recognition. Above their heads a woman's voice announced, _"Automatons P-33 designators A-12 through C-01, report to surface. Intruder detected, assessed Replicant-level Sigma. Gestalt unstable and displaying violent behaviors towards Hologram Yggdrasil. Assessed threat level Red towards Gestalt Monitor Yggdrasil. Repeat, Automatons P-33 designators A-12 through C-01…_ the message replayed, and scowling the woman clutched her head. Her mouth felt dry, her tongue like sandpaper that scratched the inside of her mouth. She made an attempt at speech, but failed, the only sound emerging being that of her jaw creaking noisily. The woman designated as 'Mother' coughed and tried again. Above their heads the feminine voice continued, " _Automaton Yggdrasil requesting access to humanoid battle drones P-33 designator H01. Access denied."_

"How long was I out?" Her voice was a replicate of the one from above, though hoarse and cracked from years of disuse.

" _Automaton Yggdrasil requesting access to humanoid battle drones P-33 designator H02. Access denied."_

" _You've been asleep for the past one thousand three hundred and twelve years."_ The bullet announced, and the woman known as Mother paled, gaping helplessly at the android. " _However you are failing to see what is truly at stake here! The Gestalt Project is failing! Gestalt (_ ERROR CODE) _has vanished and all the Gestalts are starting to relapse and I can't contact Devola or Popola at all! I think they might have been destroyed!"_

" _Automaton Yggdrasil requesting access to humanoid battle drones P-33 designator H03. Access denied. Automaton Yggdrasil activating user override passcode, 'But Mo~om!' Access approved."_

Mother looked up sharply, then scowled. "Gestalt what?" She muttered, then shook her head. "No, never mind. Get a lock on to Devola's and Popola's last transmission." She croaked, running a hand through her hair with a deep sigh. "I'll go topside and deal with Yggdrasil." Carefully the woman climbed out of the pod, her legs protesting their sudden use with an onslaught of pins and needles. She froze, glaring at the two limbs, and after a moment took a step forward. A fresh burst of tingles worked their way through her nerve endings, and the dark-haired woman grit her teeth. "Trust the Hamelin Organization to make your sleep pleasant , leaving you refreshed and revitalized when you are safely reanimated!" She sang. Her voice dipped into a low growl. "Cocksucking shitheads wouldn't know their eyes from their assholes if they ever slept in their own pods. Refreshed my butt." Grumbling to herself, the woman slowly made her way past the bullet 'droid, pausing only a minute to take mercy on the yapping robotic hound that still lay baying pitifully on its side. "And stop knocking Poochi over!" She snapped, sending a baleful look to the automaton that had awakened her. "You know he doesn't like it!"

The woman shook out her legs once more, this time using the up righted Poochi as a post. The mecha-dog remained motionless save for its ears, which rose and fell like the wings of a sparrow. This time when she walked, it was with the canine's aid. It rolled forward as she made her way to an elevator in the center of the room, its panels red with rust and surrounded by long metal cables and wires whose copper insides had become exposed through long years of disrepair. When she looked closely, Mother spied tiny drones the size of beetles crawling within the wiring, pausing occasionally at worn sections to do spot repairs; the last valiant efforts to preserve a system that was three hundred and twelve years past its intended life cycle. She watched them as the woman pressed the button that would activate the elevator, this final line of defense against time, and watched with sadness as even these tiny droids displayed the onset of age; one with its once-glossy dome crusted and lumpy with rust, like a mechanical tumor. Another that was missing its shell, exposing the tiny fibers and alloys that comprised its body. And more that bumped and crawled over each other mindlessly, their circuits fried beyond repair as they sought to recall their purpose.

It was a disheartening sight that left a lump of depression in her chest. _My children are dying and there's nothing I can do._ The elevator doors groaned as they made to open, sliding back on deteriorated gears working their last breath. They stopped midway, giving up the ghost and displaying a small chamber whose insides looked like the bloody remains of a murder scene. The woman stared at the walls, examining the eroded metal before looking to the floor. "Will this thing even hold my weight?" She wondered aloud, and at her side Poochi whimpered, pressing itself against her leg like a nervous dog. She looked down at it, and the robot stared back, its eyes a pair of digital gold rings that shown in the room's poor lighting. "…Your right." She admitted. "Stairs might be safer."

The ground trembled with an earthquake's tremor, and the woman called Mother near-lost her balance, bracing herself against the jammed elevator doors. The elevator moaned loud and lowly as though in pain, and as the woman leaned back she heard a mechanical _twang_ , one that was followed by the high whine of ricocheting wires bouncing off walls. The elevator compartment lurched to the left at an angle, and the woman fell backwards with a shout, her legs giving way to the ground as the elevator's final wires snapped and released the compartment to free fall. Metal cables shot through the shoot like a nest of vipers, only for their vicious assault to be blocked by the sudden actions of the mecha-hound. On gears that screeched it rolled itself in front of its creator, where one of the frayed metal cables whipped through the jammed doors and collided with its steel frame. A crater impacted across the base of its body, and then came the crash of the rusted cart colliding with the ground several floors below.

Her heart beating like a jackhammer in her throat, Mother straightened, staring at the black hole that remained before finally gathering her wits and picking herself up. "They say if you see your family's face flash before your eyes, it's the Angel of Death dropping by to give you a kiss." She said in a broken, wavering voice. "Thankfully I'm not one for kisses." The woman looked down at her savior and winced. The cable had come down across the robot's back like a five ton steel whip, all but tearing through the poor creature's metal hide. _If Poochi had moved any slower, my head would have been caved in by that cable._ She rested a hand on the dog's head. Its ears flapped weakly, and a small bark rose from its soundboard. "You're a good boy, Poochi." She murmured. "Now stay here with the others and rest. I can walk from here on my own. Besides, you can't follow me up the stairs with those wheels."

Poochi whined in protest and distaste, its head looking past the woman and towards the elevator shaft. Through the black slit that remained, the robot's sensors could make out a fluid running down the insides of the chute; a black tar that stank of motor oil and tree sap.

But Mother didn't notice.

Instead Mother smiled at the hound, rubbing the sensor modules hidden behind its ears, causing them to flap in an imitation of a real dog's tail wag. "Don't worry." She said reassuringly. "I'll take care of whatever nonsense Yggdrasil is up to and then be back down here. I'll get an update on Project Gestalt and then I'll start repairing you and the others and this base, okay? Everything will be fine."

Except it wasn't going to be fine. Had the robot called Poochi held a vocabulary system, it would have relayed this message to its mother. _"It's not going to be fine,"_ It would have told her, trailing along behind Mother Skuld as a squeaky shadow. _"It's not going to be okay, because you'll go up there, and you won't come back."_ It would have cried, and had it arms it would have wrapped them around its mother, holding her tight and begging her not to go, not to climb those rusty stairs that looked stained with blood in the afterglow of the room. It would have pleaded with her to ignore Yggdrasil, for Yggdrasil had lost its purpose, lost its reason to live, and was slowly moving towards its own self-termination program by whatever means available.

" _You're not coming back, are you?"_ It would have finalized, but without a vocabulary card, it could do nothing.

Nothing but wait at the steps of a rusted staircase for a woman who would never return.

* * *

Dreams.

The dreams were getting worse.

Every time she closed her eyes, they assaulted her. Dreams of that fight at the shrine. Of the Shadowlord, the Ruler of Shades, and Grimoire Noir, the living tomb that served him. Of the companions she'd gain in her travels, Grimoire Weiss, the long-winded White Book which stood in opposition to Grimoire Noir. Of the young boy who could kill with a glance, Emil, and who eventually bore the likeliness of death as a living skeleton, only to be consumed by death in the battle between Devola and Popola, the twins acting as the vanguard to the Shadow Lord. Of Yohna, the young girl she'd saved; a child trapped within a teenager's body and slowly dying from the Black Scrawl Illness, and…and…

A voice.

A voice that called to her on the edges of her consciousness.

"The Shades are acting up again." She noted, wandering from her small little hut outside of the Aerie, a cliff-staged village known for its xenophobia. A part of her expected a voice to answer back within her mind, ' _Well that just means it's that Special Time of the day, don't it Sweetheart? That Special Killing Time you know we live for.'_ but instead she heard nothing. The creature that had once possessed her, the entity known as 'Tyrann', had mysteriously vanished with the defeat of the Shadowlord. She hadn't noticed it at first—not after the initial defeat of the Shadowlord, when she'd awakened to a girl's crying and a shrine on the verge of collapse, but after, when she and the girl called Yohna had escaped and returned to the village Yohna claimed to have hailed from. It was only there, handing the sickly child off to a group of locals that watched her with scared eyes, that she realized her mind had grown silent, the lustful desire to kill no longer quite as prevalent as it had been while possessed by a Shade.

Yet Tyrann's unexpected but welcomed departure did not slacken her bloodlust as much as she'd hoped. Though the magic that had so fueled her was absent, her strength was still great; years of hacking down trees and sawing wood for the Aerie had shown to that. And the villagers of the neighboring towns still feared her; she, the strange woman who wielded saws taller than herself like a pair of dual swords and who kept company with monsters and talking books, who was excessively violent and slaughtered the creatures that roamed the plains for as much sport as self-defense. _"And all in your nighties, too._ " Tyrann's ghost whispered. _"Careful now, don't want to get them dirty with blood, my little chickadee! Don't want to soil what your granny gave you before that lizard squashed her, am I right?"_

She closed her eyes and sighed deeply. "Even when you're gone I still hear your voice." She growled, following the cave network that led from her neck of the woods to the Northern Plains. It was a small cave system, one that had been dug out and expanded centuries before hand by a people long since dead and for a purpose that had vanished with them. The ground was stained with bat shit and lined by a pair of parallel metal bars; some sort of ancient railway whose locomotives had been lost, probably shoved off the cliff face that proceeded the Aerie. _Bet the bottom of that canyon is lined with old metal scrap heaps. That and the remains of the Aerie from Wendy's attack._ She though absentmindedly. _Too bad there's not a path leading down to the canyon. Bet there's some nice scrap metal that could be used for weapons upgrades, and I know that—_ the woman froze, her mind going blank as a feeling of mournful yearning overcame her. Her heart clenched for a reason she couldn't explain. "I have a pair of saws." Her voice came out a loud whisper, and her brows, a blonde so bright they almost looked white, furrowed together in confusion. "I…I've never needed to upgrade anything." She told herself, and with it the looming perplexity grew, a nagging feeling that gnawed at her brain far off in the back of her head. "I've always used my saws and magic. I've never _touched_ a sword. _Or a spear._ Her mind added.

And yet…she could distinctly remember going to that area those kids called a 'military base', that place called the Junk Heap. She remembered her and Emil and the book going there together and entering the base and destroying the defensive drones within for their parts. "What the fuck is this?" She asked aloud. "Why do I fucking remember scouring the damned base for some electrical component or tearing up the Aerie for a shitty-ass Giant Eagle egg to upgrade some stupid sword?" _And spear._ Her mind reminded once more. "I don't use weapons! I don't know _how_ to use them, and I sure as fuck don't have any funds to pay for that kind of garbage!"

Yet the knowledge was still there. She'd spend hours, days even, searching coastlines and slaughtering shades, destroying robots and completing some villager's stupid task all so that she could get the funds and the supplies needed for a weapon upgrade. A lump settled in her stomach. "But I don't enter the villages." She reminded herself. "All the villages keep their distance aside from Façade, and they don't count because their whole society ain't right in the head." So why could she remember bartering with merchants for medicine? Why could she remember receiving funds for some bit of mercenary work? _What the fuck was this shit?_

" _The dreams are the key."_ She realized that Tyrann's voice was no longer as prominent as it used to be within her mind. It was like a memory, one she was slowly starting to lose as more time passed, fading into obscurity like those of the comrades she'd lost with the Shadowlord's fall. " _The dreams are the key, and the weapons are the secret."_ His voice didn't even have a gender attributed to it anymore. It had become little more than a loud whisper, like that of the Shades that screeched at her before falling to her saw blades.

She no longer heard their voices either, she realized.

Somewhere behind her one of the more vicious bats nipped at her exposed elbow, and with a start she was roused from her thoughts, swinging her saw blade behind her in a manner that was second nature. The bat that had bitten her fell in two pieces, the larger half screaming as it tried to flutter away on one wing, blood oozing in a heavy stream from the stump that was once its left wing. She neither saw it nor heard it, instead rubbing her eyes with her left hand. Somehow she'd come to the edge of the cave, where the rail tracks ended to grass and sunshine; the expansive Northern Plains with its sheep and goats and boar. She pursed her lips, squinting up to the sky. "Sky's too clear for Shades." She muttered despondently, and with a tired sigh wandered off into the field, hands clenching her weapons angrily. "God fucking _damn_ it. Is it too much to ask for some shitty clouds and some Shades?" She groaned. If she really wanted to, she could take on one of the local boars, but those things had grown too easy to kill long ago; there was no sport in their slaughter now.

Sighing with dismay, she wandered out into the field, wandering aimlessly amongst sheep that ran from her and goats that tried to run her down, her arms working through the masses as though possessed and butchering anything that grew to close. Yet her mind was elsewhere. To the dreams, to the _memories_ that felt somehow incomplete. _Inconsistent._ "I hunted down the Shade that killed Granny Kali." She recalled. "It was destroying the Aerie, and the fools were too xenophobic of me to listen to my warnings to flee. And then I killed it on one of the highrising platforms above the canyon, where the merchants normally sell their wares." She pursed her lips in thought, passing an eroded bridge whose purpose had long since been lost; grass and vines had overtaken the cement and concrete that had once comprised it, and at its highest point of fifty feet it came to an abrupt end, leaving nothing but the metal bars that had once strengthened it in its wake. "And then I went to that village with the library…the one with Popola and Devola and that girl Yohna, who was sick…" She chewed her lip thoughtfully, once more feeling that nagging tingle at the back of her brain screaming that she'd forgotten something. "But why would I leave my home?"

She was a recluse; a hermit, self-sufficient and without need of other people. She'd secluded herself from the world because of the Shade that had come to possess her body, yet when she'd gone to that village, Tyrann was still present…"And then I decided to go to Façade."

But why?

"So I could search for a cure for the Black Scrawl, the disease that was killing that girl, Yohna, and was picking off villagers from other towns as well."

But what did she care? She had her own issues with Tyrann and his insatiable bloodlust and from what she knew the Black Scrawl was incurable; a mysterious illness that sentenced it's victims to inevitable death by the cryptic black marking that appeared on their skin like tattooed glyphs. Why should she care about some brat who was doomed to die like so many others in the neighboring villages? A girl she'd never even met up until she'd visited Popola and Devola's village?

She paused, finding herself engulfed in shadow and looked around hopefully. The field was gone. In its place was the eve of a forest, one steadily growling larger and thicker the further she walked, the trees engulfing the sky in their battle for a piece of the ever-constant sun. She looked behind her, where the trees emptied back out towards the plains. It was still as horrifically sunny as when she'd first started her walking and still without a Shade in sight. Her jaw clenched, and she turned back to the forest. "You'd think a nice dark forest would be a fucking breeding ground for these things," She growled through her teeth, "But _no_ , the Shades avoid the damned Forest of Myth like the villagers avoid anyone with the Black Scrawl. And what the hell am I doing _here_ of all places?" The last time she'd entered the Forest of Myth had been to… "Mother fucker!" She screamed. "It was so I could ask the goddamned villagers about a cure for the Black Scrawl! Just like every other shitty ass village I've gone to!" Except this village had been _particularly_ useless. The folk that resided within had been suffering from some sort of sleeping sickness, and the Mayor had enlisted her and The Book's help to find the cause. Yet instead they'd found themselves victims of the sleeping sickness as well, where they'd run into the Mayor and all his sleeping villagers locked in some dreamscape and unable to escape.

 _And the tree._ Tyrann's ghost was but a whisper. _Don't forget that god-awful tree._

"Like I could." She growled. The overgrown bush had been the cause of the strange Sleeping Sickness; a huge, over towering tree the locals all called the Divine Tree. It had spoken to her in her dream, speaking of memories condensed and lost to time, its purpose gone until _The Man and The Book_ arrived.

 _The Man and The Book…_

 _The Man and The Book…_

The words echoed through her brain. "I've been here before…" She began, "But…why do I feel like I've never entered this place before?" Grimly, she tried to recall the faces of the Mayor and the townsfolk. They existed. She knew this with absolute certainty that they existed, and yet the images that should have arisen with the locals were all absent; the faces displayed little more that blank slates void of any sort of identifiable features. _The Man and The Book._ The Book was Weiss, she knew. She'd discussed the events of the tree in passing with him, commenting on how strange the tree was and if it was possible that a Shade had possessed it. Weiss had been doubtful.

So why had the tree been happy to receive _The Man and The Book_? "I'm a woman." She told herself. "A _woman_. There's no way it could have—It must have been talking about something else. Some _one_ else." But the tree had been the only thing inhabited by a Shade, if indeed the Divine Tree had been possessed as she herself. There had been no signs of the Shadowlord and its Grimoire Noir anywhere, or else surely the entire village would have been overrun by Shades when she and The Book had arrived. Right?

 _Right?_

She ran a hand through her platinum-blonde hair, the strands curled into a tight, braided bun, thinking back to her dream again, of the male voice that had spoken to her in a land comprised of nothing but shadow and golden light.

"… _ine…don't…"_

"… _go back…do not…come here..."_

"… _don't…"_

The voice had been familiar to her, like someone she'd once known intimately long, long ago and had since lost to time. But _who_? Who was the voice that whispered to her in the depths of night, haunting her dreams like the Shade that had once possessed her body? _Who?!_

 _The dreams are the key._ Tyrann repeated, _Don't forget that god-awful tree._

She paused, meditating on the words of a ghostly apparition. "A tree that collects memories." She murmured. She scowled, looking one last time over her shoulder. The day wasn't seeing any clouds that might spawn prey anytime soon, regrettably. Not on a clear sky like today, where the wind was blowing from the desert of Façade, bringing with it the scent of heat and sand. She pursed her lips. "Guess it's time I paid a visit to the last great legend."

She walked forward, entering the forest and hearing the voices of comrade's who'd abandoned her for death bicker in the back of her mind.

* * *

The village was deserted.

In the silence of the forest, not a soul could be seen, the little huts made of wood and twigs empty of their prior residents. Frowning, the woman peered around, following the broad, beaten path of earth and pine needles towards the village center. The trees here were tall and overarching; large conifers of pine and ash that had grown massive in the years that had passed, untouched by time or man. Through the thick canopy above she could spy clips of blue sky, yet it was not enough to provide any sort of warmth or light in this area. The air was cool and crisp, but the air had an odd scent to it; an oily tang had invaded the normal scents of trees and saps. It brought to mind the machines within the Junk Heap, robots that spat out black plumes of smoke and dripped oil and grease that stained the floors around them.

Kainé wrinkled her nose at the scent, stopping near one dome-roofed house and peering at it intently. The wooden door had been torn off its hinges and lay discarded outside, its heavy pine frame cracked and splintered around the edges. The inside was dark; an empty hearth lay abandoned towards the back, and the windows that would have normally allowed light in had all been boarded shut from the inside, as though the previous occupants had been trying to keep something out. A table rested on its side towards the living room's center, where a discarded bowl had broken into three large ceramic pieces. Fruit lay scattered across the wooden floor, and the woman found that if she squinted, she could make out darker areas within the grain. Kainé frowned, her thumb rubbing the leather grip of her weapons restlessly. There'd been a struggle here, though the blood was too old for it to have been recent. "Looks like this place got raided by Shades." She murmured, lilac eyes darting to the darker corners of the room and straining to make out any signs of possible new denizens. A hint of gold perhaps, or maybe a shadow of a darker hue, moving restlessly as it awaited an opportunity to attack. She even strained her ears for the voices that accompanied the creatures, yet no words, no screeches, surged forth to meet her. The house was as empty and dead as the Shrine when she'd awoken free of her possession from Tyrann.

It wouldn't have been the first time such an act had happened; the Shades were well known and feared for their aggression towards humans, and if the smaller ones had allied themselves with one of the rarer larger shades, it would have been easy for them to invade a place like the Forest of Myth. This village in particular had always been one of the more peaceful areas on the wayside, the locals comprised more of traders and merchants over guards and warriors. There were no walls or fences to keep neither the creatures out nor any guards to aid in protecting the natives. Such a task would have been left to wandering mercenaries ( _like him, like the man who doesn't exist)_ , slaying the local Shade population before they grew too emboldened by mass or size. She'd seen it happen before: The Aerie, the village Kainé was born in, had been attacked thrice. Twice by the lizard-like Shade that had killed her grandmother, and then again by an even larger Shade composed of nothing but a large eye, it's body a black, circular mass of energy. Yohna's village had been attacked by a shade of colossal size, the vanguard hailing the Shadowlord's coming, right before the humanoid-Shade had kidnapped the little girl who'd lived there. Even Façade, a Kingdom of Rules with its large, encroaching walls and many masked guards, had been victimized by the creatures; this one in the form of a great hound that lead the surrounding wolves of the desert against any man who dared cross it.

She left the house, nudging the broken door with her foot. _And all those places had their own guards and were still overwhelmed. These fools didn't stand a chance._ The thought left a deep pit in the center of her stomach. Kainé didn't like people. Having been victimized by the cruelties of humanity at an early age, she'd grown a strong dislike for other people early on, and it'd only grown when the Aerie had further alienated her and then exiled her from the village upon Tyrann's possession of her body. Yet the woman was not completely without compassion, and while she did not particularly care for other humans, neither did the warrior care to see them mowed down like sheep for a slaughter. _There would have been children here too._ She thought. _Some of them younger then Emil._ She grimaced, her heart clenching painfully as she thought of the young boy who'd sacrificed so much in their battle against the Shadowlord. First, his body, then his life in an effort to protect them from the devastating spell cast by Popola. He couldn't have been more than seven when she'd first laid eyes on him; a shy, withdrawn little boy who'd been blindfolded and dressed in the garb of a high-class merchant's son from Seafront. _And he hadn't even hit puberty when he sacrificed his body for power. All so he could save_ you _. So that he could help_ you. _So that when the time came, and he was filled with utter loathing for the monstrosity he'd become, he could sacrifice his life for_ you _so that_ you _could take the Shadowlord out._

The woman grit her teeth, a knot of loathing locking in her throat. There were no tears, however; the time for tears had come and gone a long time ago. The only thing that was left was the anger, the pain, and the _hate_. _Always the hate. What a pitiful creature you are, to have allowed yourself to be consumed by such a terrible emotion._ That voice hadn't been Tyrann. Tyrann had always thrived on Kainé's hate, right up to the very end when he'd been about to fully possess her and leave her as a Shade like the other creatures she'd massacred, where he'd finally voiced his regret over what she was to become. No, this voice was that of her grandmother. Grandma Kali, who'd always been there for her and had taught her how to accept herself when no one else would. Grandma Kali, who'd taught her to chop wood and to survive in the wilds when life in the Aerie grew too harsh. Grandma Kali, who'd been slaughtered by the reptilian Shade that went by the name of 'Hook'. _Stop beating yourself up over what you can't change._ Kali's voice chided. _What's done is done and there's no changing that fact. Do you think that poor boy would want you throwing a fit like a stupid toddler every time you thought of him?_ The woman closed her eyes, scowling. No, Emil wouldn't appreciate that. Despite the hard cards he'd been dealt, he'd always somehow managed to maintain a kind, peaceful bearing that always left her at ease. Lashing out in violence over his memory would have horrified him, had he still been alive, and she couldn't dishonor his memory in such a manner.

 _So instead you'll unleash your violence through your hatred for Shades? Is that your excuse now?_ Another voice, one she could not recall, sighed in the back of her mind. _Oh Kainé…_

"Shut up!" She screamed. "All of you, just shut up, alright? I never asked for you fuckers as my conscious, and I'll be damned before I let any of you govern my actions! Now all of you shut your mouths and let me think or take a hike off the Aerie's cliffs!" Huffing to herself, cheeks flush, she stomped onwards, her anger masking her eyes from the slow and gradual changes of the trees, where wires slowly began to crawl up tree trunks in black vines and where branches grew ribbed with rubber casings. Power cables took the place of tree roots as she grew closer to the Divine Tree, and with it the smell of motor oil became more prominent, drowning out the fresh scent of trees and clean air. She paused when she arrived at the great tree in question; a towering redwood who's branches broke through the surrounding canopy by a good five hundred feet, with a trunk larger than most of the houses in the village. Its bark, which her mind initially called 'red-brown', was instead a deep brown closer to black, the texture not so much rough wood as a smooth, almost oily shell. An acrid smell of diesel fuel permeated the area, choking her lungs and burning her eyes, and with a snarl she brought an arm up to her cover her face, for once wishing she'd chosen to wear something a little more conservative than the baby blue nightware her grandmother had left her. At least then she'd have something to protect her lungs. The dainty outfit she wore now did nothing to shield her from the poison in the air, and squinting, she glared at the massive tree, wondering what she'd need to do to convince it to spill its secrets.

A strange, hollow squeak met her ears as rubber grinded against rubber, and before she could think her body was in motion, leaping away from her initial position as a massive coil of cords exploded from the earth. They knotted and writhed against each other, like a nest of snakes, rising into a form that was distinctly human in shape. Its features were holes where there should have been eyes and a mouth, and the cables that formed its lips twisted upwards in a mockery of a smile. "Hello, I—"

It's head rolled to the ground before disassembling once more into wires from where she lashed out, severing the creature's neck with a single strike. It hurt to breath still, but now adrenaline was filling her veins, her pulse roaring through her ears as she turned to face this strange new threat. She wheeled around, watching as the strange body collapsed upon itself, and then quickly darted to the left as she caught new motion from the corner of her eye. It was the thing again, forming up near the remains of the Mayor's house, now a decrepit ruin covered in an ugly black tar. "How violent." Its voice was masculine and synthetic, a strange combination that left the hair on the back of her neck stock straight. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am `/&6I)l24$!1, the overseer of this forest." What emerged from the hollow pit of its mouth was a jumble of noise and beeps, and baffled, she stared at it blankly, momentarily lowering her guard.

"You're what?" Kainé demanded. What was this? Some sort of magic left from the Old World? A creature like Weiss, both inanimate yet baring a soul at the same time?

Before her the strange creature continued. "You don't understand the language my name is in, so call me anything you like, whether it is the "Overseer" or "Young Man". You probably have a lot of things you don't understand right now. So what do you want to know?"

"One: About the forest

Two: About me

Three: About the future. Pick one."

The woman stared at the creature, mouth parted in confusion. Was this some kind of a joke? Yet before she could interrogate the stranger or even pick one of his choices, the cable-man launched into an explanation. "The forest you're standing in isn't actually a forest at all." He revealed. "It's a computer terminal, one used by an ancient people long lost to study the 'demonic element', what you refer to as 'magic', and quantum physics. It is also the terminal that oversees that creation of Replicants such as you and the status of Gestalts, documenting which Gestalts have relapsed and those Replicants dying because of their berserk state. Unfortunately, with the destruction of Self-Awareness Maintaining Gestalt, (\\)!&1², the computer system has gone into its final termination stage, which is what you're seeing now." An arm comprised of hoses and cables swept across the area, and despite herself she followed it, taking in the decayed state of a forest that was steadily becoming more and more mechanical with each passing minute. "A shame really. I had so many good memories of this world, too. It's disappointing that I won't be able to record them anywhere."

Something emerged from one of the houses, lights flashing, and the woman turned, starting as a robot emerged. Rectangular and boxy in form, it strode forward on a tracked chassis, a klaxon flashing angry green lights as it rotated at the top of its body. Two pronged, hydraulic pumps served as primitive arms, and as it rolled forward the clasps at the ends flexed and sparked, igniting with electricity. The machine grated towards Kainé on its rusted chassis, and from more houses others emerged, identical to the first in make and model, rusted and scratched and covered in dents.

A wry smile twisted across Kainé's face. _This_ was what she'd come here for. _This_ was what made her blood sing and heart race with glee. "It's the Junk Heap all over again, isn't it?" The woman said aloud, before rushing towards the first of the robots. At the last moment the warrior dodged left, darting behind the first 'bot as it slowly tried to turn and follow her, and with a grin she brought the first of her weapons down upon its body. The serrated edge sawed through the brittle metal like so many trees before it, and sparks emerged from the machine as its internal power core was punctured and its movements came to a halt. By the time it exploded the woman was already upon the next robot, face alight with delight as her left blade swept through its chassis with a horizontal slice. Disabled, it reached for Kainé with its prongs, and she sliced through them with her right blade, severing the rusted metal from its body. A single thrust ended its life, and with a laugh she leapt forward, muscles singing as she soared a good five feet into the air before plunging down on her next target with both blades. The woman ripped them free of her latest corpse, and as the machine began to spark and short-circuit she back flipped, landing a good distance away from the gathering mass of droids as the machine exploded. Two others were in the automaton's blast radius, and they too fizzled and died, exploding like their brethren in a glorious display of black smoke and electricity. "Come on motherfuckers!" She roared at them, brandishing her weapon before her and sweeping it across the field at the encroaching robots. "I'll take you all on! You can't do shit, you expired tin cans!" The woman cackled, then launched herself towards her next target, continuing the onslaught of destruction.

The cable-man watched it all from a safe distance, a smile on its nonexistent lips as it watched her go. As such, lost in the heat of battle and the joys that came with mindless destruction as she was, his next words almost went unheard. "On to the second point, this being about myself." Kainé didn't so much as glance his way. "I am an entity which holds an existence similar to that of the Grimoires Noir and Weiss; I am a creature whose existence is possible only by way of a Gestalt, and as such have been granted mobility and thought by the soul resting within me. Like your deceased Grimoires, I also control the 'demonic element', which is what is allowing me to take the form you see. I am the recorder of the life and death of all Replicants and Gestalts such as you, ensuring that for each Gestalt, a Replicant might exist for which it could bond to upon the fusion of the two Grimoires." There was a frown in its voice, and an earthquake rocked the area, almost causing Kainé to lose her footing. She paid for it as one of the bots she'd been about to dismantle suddenly shocked her. The woman screamed. "Unfortunately, both of those books have been destroyed along with the two Gestalts held within their pages." Another quake rocked the area, followed by the sound of splintering wood.

Kainé rolled out of the way as one of the 'bots pylons lurched forward, her body screaming from the electricity frying her nerves. "Without them, without the Sealed Verses held within their pages, there's no way to reunite the Gestalts and the Replicants! No way to unite the _souls to the bodies!_ And without the Self-Awareness Maintaining Gestalt's Maso, the remaining Gestalts are all doomed! Doomed to live out their remaining lives as mere shadows of their former selves, only to relapse and go berserk against the very bodies that would have granted them a renewed life! _And it's your fault, you goddamned Replicant!"_

Another quake transpired, and as she rolled to her feet Kaine finally saw the source of the quakes. It was another robot, this one twice the size of a man and humanoid in shape, its body the long and heavy metal of an overgrown robotic toy. It stared down at her with eyes that glowed like yellow stars, and a plume of exhaust emerged from a tailpipe near the back of its head.

She froze.

"I've fought that thing before." Her voice emerged a whisper. "In the Junk Heap, I fought that thing. That thing with the tiny Shade on its head. With Emil and Weiss and, and…" She almost had it, a form in her head, large and muscular but with a kind, if hard, baring. "With…" The form vanished before her mind's eye, and with a scream the woman's left arm swept out and back, the blunt of her blade smashing into a robot approaching behind her and crushing the lights and antenna on its head. It burped a cluster of smoke and fell still, unable to receive instruction with its destroyed receiver. "Who the hell is he?!" She screamed, and as the P-33 android stomped towards her, the cable-man laughed.

"Who? The person most important to you?" It taunted. "Are you saying you forgot the face of the Replicant that scarified its very _existence_ for you?" The creature laughed again. It was a cruel sound that grated on the ears, one composed entirely of the grinding screeches of rubber against rubber. "I'll tell you what, if you can defeat these kids, I'll tell you why you are here, and that person you can't remember."

Something came flying towards her, and instinctively the woman dodged, springing back and baring her weapons at this latest threat to join the machines. Lilac eyes widened, and for a moment she stared at the creature approaching her in shock. "Is that…is that supposed to be _me_?" It was a robot, like but unlike the others. Its form was humanoid, yet its body was still the same grey steel that comprised all the other machines Kainé had torn through. Its bearing was feminine, with metal sheets soldered together in such a manner as to depict clothing against its lithe frame. It bore a face like her own, mechanical though it was, and stared at her with golden rings for eyes, walking towards her in an expressly sensual manner that reminded the warrior of her lessons with Grandma Kali. The weapons it bore were a mockery of her own; two rotating saw blades that had been welded onto its wrists.

"What the fuck?" Her mouth dropped open. "What the flying _fuck_?!" She almost dropped her weapons in her shock. "When did you-why the hell would you use _me_ as a model, you glistering shitfaced garbage heaps?!" She screamed. "The hell did you do, eat an image of me and a bucket of bolts and shit this thing out?" Of all the people it could have chosen to imitate, why create a robot in _her_ image? What made her so special that they thought making a robot based off her was a good idea? "Oh…." She shook her head, backing away from the bot, which dipped into a pose much like her own before she'd launch herself into an attack. "Oh…I hope you only gave this thing my looks, Rustbucket, because if you gave that thing my _personality_ too…"

A conversation arose in her mind, one she'd overhead between Emil and ( _Him_ ) someone else. _"Kainé's so unstable, and Weiss can't stop arguing with people. I hope they can hold it together once I'm gone…"_ Unstable. That was how Emil had called it, and goddamned if he wasn't on the money, too. If this thing really was like her, _unstable_ , then there was no telling what it might do. _Which means he plans on not only killing you, but everything else in this forest, too._ Emil's voice was so fresh in her mind that it was almost as if he'd never died. " _Kainé, you need to defeat this thing before it goes out of control."_

" _Kainé."_

"Kainé!"

She blinked and looked up, certain her ears were deceiving her. The woman's eyes boggled, and for the third time that day she found herself taken aback. A form dropped through the canopy, its body covered in an ancient, dirty cloak that might have once been a drape. It covered the body of an animated skeleton, one that came to hover mere inches off the ground as the creature turned its leering head towards her. "What are you doing, Kainé?" It demanded in a voice of a youthful boy. "Can't you see it's just trying to distract you? We have to beat it before it destroys the whole forest!"

"Emil?" The robot with her face launched itself at Kainé, and quickly she brought her blades up, parrying the horrid reflection's strike. "You're alive?" The last time she'd seen him, one of the twins from Yohna's village, Popola, had been trying to destroy them all with an alien magical spell. It'd created a black ball of darkness that seemed to consume everything it'd touched, and Emil had been the one to save them with his magic, casting a levitation spell that sent her small group floating to safety. Yet Popola had been vengeful. _So_ vengeful. They'd accidently killed Devola, the other twin when the two redheads had tried to stop them from interfering with The Shadowlord's plans, and Devola had taken the blunt of most of their attack. Popola had been overcome with grief then, and had lashed out against Emil's magic even as the boy was guiding them all to safety. And then Emil…Emil had—

Emil had been consumed by the black hole.

The robot bore down on her with a strength comparable to when she'd been possessed by Tyrann, and her arms buckled. "How…the hell…are you alive?" She demanded, gritting her teeth as she broke contact, lashing out with a quick counter that was just as effectively blocked by her counterpart. The P-33 robot was growing closer now, and the ground trembled with its approach, further increasing her difficulties against the droid that bore her figure.

"I guess I'm stronger than I look." Emil confessed, and not two, but _four_ arms shot out from beneath his shoddy cloak, the skeletal fingers tracing patterns in the air as the young mage prepared a spell. "But we can talk more about that later. First we need to stop this thing before it destroys everything!" Bright, violet-white magic shot from the mutated youth's hands, striking the P-33 hard enough to send it stumbling backwards. It fell, landing on top of two of the smaller box-machines that had surged around it. Explosions followed its fall, and slowly, its gears grinding nosily, it picked itself up once more. "At least these are just machines." The skeletal youth murmured. "I…I don't think I could fight another creature that bleeds again, and at least machines can't feel pain. Not…not like Devola and Popola…"

"Emil! Send some of that magic over my way!" Kainé's scream brought the creature's attention to the feminine warrior. "It's not that I don't _enjoy_ beating myself up, but this bitch is a real pain in the ass! Are you planning on blasting her into a tin can anytime soon or what?!" With a roar the woman planted a high-heeled boot in the bot's chest, shoving off it with enough force to send her flying up and back and the automaton stumbling backwards. The woman landed a good fifteen feet away, and as the bot recovered she rushed it with a snarl. "Imma teach your sorry ass to make a mockery of me!" First the right, then the left blade came down upon the 'droid's head, only for the metal doppelganger to slip through her guard, moving at an angle so unnatural that the woman had no time to react to its next attack. The flat of its left sword came down on her head, sending Kainé sprawling to the ground with a pained yell, and Emil looked on in horror, a frightened scream emerging from a throat that didn't exist.

"No! Leave Kainé alone!" He screamed and lurched forward, releasing a plume of bright, violet magic that surged forth wildly, colliding hard and fast with the metal double. It threw the robot backwards, where it landed hard against the trunk of the Divine Tree. A hollow _gong_ rang throughout the area upon the creature's impact, leaving an unnatural dent in the trunk's dark wood. The robot rose to its feet undamaged, and then its focus centered on the skeleton boy. In a manner that lent itself more to Shades than a human's movement, it darted towards the young mage, slinking through shadows and leaping through specks of daylight as though it too could be victimized by sunlight. However Emil paid it no mind. No, his attention was drawn elsewhere, and as the real Kainé tackled the robot to the ground with a roar, Emil's blank, white orbs remained centered on the dented trunk. The cabel-man had tensed when the robot had collided with it, and now the wire-creature hung further back, not so much away from the fight as safeguarding the tree by placing itself between the trunk and the battle. "That tree…"

"Emil, what the hell are you doing?!" Kainé snarled. "Now's not the time to get lost in thought! You said yourself this thing's going to destroy the whole forest if we don't destroy her! Get your head out of your ass and help me!"

"Oh gosh, I hope I'm right." The boy whispered, before proclaiming in a louder voice, "Ignore her Kainé! She's just a distraction! We need to attack that huge tree! It's got to be the thing powering it!

Kainé looked at the youth sharply, then glanced towards the tree. She smirked. "Got it!" With a cry the woman sent a roundhouse kick into her opponent's head. The metal creaked wildly where the warrior's foot met metal, yet even as the machine lurched forward to counter, Kainé was up and off, ducking under the twin blades of her opponent in favor of the Divine Tree's trunk. "You picked the wrong woman to fuck with, asshole!" She roared as the cable-man darted in front of her. A single vertical slash ended the creature's second body before it could launch even a single attack, and with a laugh that bordered on hysterical the woman leapt towards the trunk.

Before Kainé had met Emil, before she'd met a loud-mouth book of magic and been possessed by a Shade, Kainé had spent much of her life as, of all thing, a lumberjack. Her grandmother had seen the anger that so consumed her from the way the Aerie treated her, and so instead had decided to put that rage to some use, fashioning a pair of blades with serrated edges that could easily saw into wood and mow down branches and trunks. Though the elderly woman's back was bent with age, she'd showed Kainé how to lop of branches as thick as her arm with a single blow and how to fell tree trunks with the most minimal of effort. Those trees, left to thrive with humanity's ever decreasing population, could reach almost mythic sizes at times, and it were these trees that Kainé took her anger out on, sharping her skill with her weapons an her physical strength to the point where even these trees would fall to her strikes. The Divine Tree, whose trunk was comparable to those trees of old, proved to be no different. Her blades sawed easily into the trunk's bark, revealing it to be not wood but _metal_ , as old and brittle and rusted as the robots of the Junk Heap, of the machines that sought to kill her even now in this clearing that was once a village, but had since become a battlefield.

Oil leaked from the wounds she inflicted, and as a woman who thrived on violence she smiled. "Emil!" She cried, darting away from the tree, "Send the magic to that black tar! We're going to light this fucker up like a torch!"

The mage nodded. "Got it!" His four arms rose at once, each hand forming strange patterns in the air as a spell wove itself into being. There came a discharge of violet magic, and as it rushed towards the Divine Tree Kainé ran forwards, ignoring her robotic counterpart and paying for it as something slashed into her back. Yet pain was something she'd grown accustomed to long ago, and though her back erupted in a red haze of fiery pain, she pressed onwards. The magic collided with the tree and it's oil-sap, and what followed next was an explosion of such intensity that it through the woman forward. Her ears rang with a high-pitched din, and a fresh spasm of pain tore into her back as she rolled to a stop on the ground. Emil was at her side in an instant, and the warrior was dimly aware of bony hands sliding under her arms and dragging her further from the Divine Tree. Spots clouded her vision, forcing the woman to squint as she looked first towards the Tree, which had become a Divine Wreckage of Hellfire, then to Emil, whose jaw moved with words she couldn't hear. The youth pointed with one of his newer hands, and Kainé attempted to follow it, her spine screaming at the motion of her head.

The world was collapsing. The trees, the robots, the ground, _everything_. The forest was beginning to _melt_ , with forest canopies dripping like green rain and brown bark running down tree trunks like wax in the sun. The ground began to bubble and boil, revealing the cables and wires that comprised the whole of the Forest of Myth. Even the robots were falling victim, their metal bodies blistering and expanding with red-hot sores that quickly melted into puddles of lava, only to be drawn towards the center of the destroyed Divine Tree. Kainé watched with wide eyes as her robotic duplicate tried to escape, first on two legs growing hot and molten, then on arms and legs when its feet could no longer bare its weight. It stared at the warrior and mage with a look that almost mimicked fear, until even that melted, leaving nothing but a heated lump of slate in its wake. The forest was growing uncomfortably hot now, and the smell of oil and gas was near-overwhelming. _We need to get out of here. If we don't, the fumes alone will kill us, if not the gathering heat._ Yet she didn't move. Neither did Emil. Instead both of them remained as they were, one standing, the other sitting, entranced by the chaotic melding pot of plant and machine. It swirled and danced, writhed and roiled, until finally a face could be seen within the boiling mass.

"Using the power of magic to fuse machines, human and plants together, this is the truth behind this world!" It was the voice of the cable-man that arose from the face's lips. "Amazing! Amazing!" It rabbled, "To think that a Replicant like you could reach this level! Amazing!" The face vanished in the wake of power cables. They rose from the ground en mass, writhing like dying snakes. The pool of creation began to glow with a bright light, and grimacing Kainé forced herself to her feet.

"We need to stop that light!" She cried over the din in her ears. "Come on, let's go!" She didn't so much as see Emil nod as sense him at her back, a familiar presence that gave her warmth and inspired her to press onwards. A gentle glow befell her vision, and the woman smiled when one of the wild power lines bounced off a translucent shield three feet above her head. More cables bounced and danced over her head the closer she came to the light source, and ignoring them, she lashed out; slashing into the white light and feeling her blades meet an invisible wall. Gritting her teeth the woman growled, striking at the barrier once more and feeling them bounce once more off something she couldn't see. "This is pissing me _off_!" She screamed, striking again and again at the light source, each strike causing her bones to hum and her shoulders to burn. She'd long past the point of noticing her own injuries, however, and it showed with every weakened strike and every sluggish cut. "Come on!" She screamed at it. Her mind was growing hazy with white noise, and her sight was starting to gray around the edges. "Fucking _break_ already, you piece of shit! Why won't you fucking—"

The world suddenly grew quiet.

She froze, staring through a vision that pulsed and throbbed to the pain in her back and shoulders and arms and sensing that she was not alone. Something had changed; somewhere a barrier had broken down, leaving her on the edge between the reality she knew and something… _else._ The woman squinted, peering into the mass of light and seeing something; a figure, a person, their stature large and muscular. Her heart began to pound with emotions she barely recognized: fear, excitement, and anticipation filled her head and coiled in her chest. _It's him._ She thought to herself. _The person I keep dreaming of. That person who means so much to me._

"… _..ine…. don't…."_

Moisture trailed down her cheeks, and with shock Kainé' realized she'd started to cry. The last time she'd cried was when her grandmother had passed away.

"… _.go back….. do not…. come here…."_

A sense of desperation filled her being as she reached for it, filled with the knowledge that this was her one and only chance to retrieve that person. Yet already it was slipping away, and she strained for it with both hands, her blades falling to lay discarded at her feet. Something gave in her shoulders, and a fresh fire of pain rushed through her arms and down her spine. The woman screamed. "This is pissing me off! This is my life! I decide how I'll live! I don't need anyone telling me what to do! It's my decision to die for you as your sword!" She was rambling and hysteric and didn't care. The only thing that mattered was the person before her, the person who was fading in a light that was dying, and goddamned if she was going to let that fucker get away from her again! "I'll get it back no matter what price I have to pay!" She howled.

"… _don't….."_

Someone, some _thing_ pushed her forwards from behind. It wasn't much, but it provided her a little extra reach, a little extra leverage to allow her to move forward towards that dimming person. "Stop screwing around. How can you just disappear all by yourself! I am the one who will decide what the meaning of my life is! I get to do whatever I want with my own life!"

The woman took a deep breath, and with all her heart and soul reached out for the vanishing individual in the white.

"GET BACK HERE YOU MOTHERFUCKING BASTARD!"

The white light had dissipated by the time Kainé came to. Above her head rested a clear blue sky, absent of clouds and trees and wires. It was a blue so bright it hurt to look at, and grimacing the woman looked away, instead choosing to look around her at her new surroundings. The Forest of Myth, with its trees and cables and wires and decimated village, was gone. In its place was nothing but an empty field, barren of even the grass the so covered the Northern Plains. Yet it wasn't completely empty. The woman looked around her. She was lying in the stamen of a large, white flower. _It looks like a Lunar Tear_. She marveled. _A Lunar Tear made of machines and vegetation._ Dazed, she looked around some more, finding Emil slowly floating towards her, his eyes resting not so much on the warrior but at something resting at her side.

"Is that…?" He started, then trailed off as Kainé looked down.

A man was resting beside her. His head lay in her lap, and his breath holding the deep rhythm of sleep. He was a massive man, one whose muscular body spoke of a hard life of combat and toils, the lines in his face those of a worried and fretful father. Absentmindedly she nodded, hesitantly running her fingers through the man's hair, as though fearful he might vanish at her sudden touch. "I remember now." She muttered in a daze. "It's—it's him. But how…?" Grimacing the woman scrunched her eyes shut, thinking back to whatever had so pushed her towards the man now resting in her lap. She'd heard a voice in that moment. A voice she knew. _"I'll leave this one to you, lingerie woman-"_

"Weiss…" She murmured, and cast her gaze once more around the landscape. Yet the book was nowhere to be seen, and despite her dislike for the arrogant grimoire, her heart sank a bit.

Emil floated closer. "I can't believe it's him." He murmured. "He looks so much younger though…like he did when I still had my body, Kainé. I can't believe—I forgot about him." The skeleton looked up, his tone confused and alarmed. "I forgot about him! How could I forget about him though?! It's because of him that I even met you all! If not for him, I'd have never met you and Weiss, nor would I have had the chance to travel and meet so many people!" The youth's voice trembled with emotion, and Kainé bit her lip, not trusting her own voice to comfort him. "How could I…How could I forget someone who means so much to us, Kainé?"

The woman shook her head. Emil's words were a reflection of her own inner thoughts, cast into a tumulus storm at the man's appearance. "I—" She swallowed. "The Shade—Tyrann was possessing me." Fuck, how had she forgotten this? "He was with his daug—Yohna. I—I couldn't fight it. I told him to kill me. He'd killed the Shadowlord and I needed him to kill me before I hurt him or, or Yohna." She grit her teeth. "But he didn't. He _didn't_."

"Of course not." Emil's voice held a strange amount of pride to it. "Because that's not _him_." He said. "He could never kill us. We mean too much to him. We mean too much to—"

"Nier?"

The duo froze. The name that had been at the tip of their tongues had finally been thrown out into the open, but it had emerged from neither the Warrior Kainé nor the Mage Emil. They looked to the source, and there, on a single white pedal stood a woman, her hair long and overflowing behind her like a black cloak, her clothing strange and outlandish even by Façade's standards. She looked them over with sharp, intelligent brown eyes, observing first Emil, with his four arms and skeletal body, then Kainé in her grandmother's lingerie, stained red with her own blood. Finally they came to rest on the sleeping form of Nier, the kind-hearted mercenary who'd sold his blade purely for his dying daughter's sake and had slain a demon in the hopes of curing her strange illness.

She cast her gaze upon them all with growing recognition, and then horror.

"What hell have you three done?" Skuld whispered.

* * *

 _Comments of a Madwoman: This chapter is a direct retelling of 'Ending E' of Nier, what some might call the 'true ending' of the series based on the events that happened. As such, I've also stolen some direct pieces of a fan translation for Kainé's section of this chapter, adding my own flourish to ensure it made sense to anyone reading it._


End file.
